"It is certainly a good Maxim for an Embassadour in this Country, not to be over-studious in procuring a familiar friendship with Turks; a fair comportment towards all in a moderate way, is cheap and secure; for a Turk is not capable cf real friendship towards a Christian." PAUL RYCAUT, 'The History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire', 1668.
"Familiar association with heathens and inidels is forbidden to the people of Islam, and friendly and intimate intercourse between two parties that are to one another as darkness and light is far from desirable." ASIM EFENDI, History, c. 1809.
" . . . sans perdre de ternps je m'appliquai d l'e'tude de la langue francaise, comme la plus universelle, et capable de me faire parvenir a la connoissance des auteurs qui ont e'crit sur les belles sciences." SEID MUSTAFA, Diatribe de l'Ingenieur,' 1803.
THE French Revolution was the first great movement of ideas in Western Christendom that had any real effect on the world of Islam. Despite the long confrontation of Christendom and Islam across the Mediterranean, and their numberless contacts, in peace and in war, from Syria to Spain, such earlier European movements as the Renaissance and the Reformation woke no echo and found no response among the Muslim peoples. It may at first sight seem strange that Islamic civilization, which in its earlier stages was so receptive to influences from Hellenism and Iran, even from India and China, nevertheless decisively rejected the West. But an explanation is not hard to find. When Islam was still expanding and receptive, the Christian West had little or nothing to offer, but rather flattered Islamic pride with the spectacle of a culture that was visibly and palpably inferior. Furthermore, by the very fact that it was Christian, it was discredited in advance. The Muslim doctrine of successive revelations, culminating in the final mission of Muhammad, enabled the Muslim to reject Christianity as an earlier and imperfect form of something which he alone possessed in its entirety, and to discount Christian thought and Christian civilization. After the initial impact of eastern Christianity on Islam in its earliest years, Christian influence, even from the high civilization of Byzantium, was reduced to a minimum. Later, when the advance of Christendom and the decline of Islam created a new relationship, Islam was crystallized-not to say ossified-and had become impervious to external stimuli, especially from the millennial enemy in the West.
All this does not mean that there was no Western influence in Turkey before the eighteenth century. On the contrary, the Turks, while rejecting Christianity, Christian ideas, and Christian civilization, still found many things in Christian Europe that were useful enough and attractive enough to borrow, imitate, and adapt.
"No nation in the world [wrote the Imperial ambassador Busbecq in 1560] has shown greater readiness than the Turks to avail themselves of the useful inventions of foreigners, as is proved by their employment of cannons and mortars, and many other things invented by Christians. They cannot, however, be induced as yet to use printing, or to establish public clocks, because they think that the Scriptures, that is, their sacred books-would no longer be scriptures if they were printed, and that, if public clocks were introduced, the authority of their muezzins and their ancient rites would be thereby impaired."
Firearms could be accepted, since they would be of service in the Holy War for Islam against the infidels; printing and clocks could not be accepted, since they served no such purpose, and might flaw the social fabric of Islam. The attitude of mind described by Busbecq is attested by many examples. When a Sultan wished to imitate the construction and armament of a captured Venetian galley, and some voices were raised in objection to this aping of infidel ways, the ulema ruled that for the sake of the Holy War it was permissible to learn from the infidels new ways of waging war against them. But when Jewish refugees from Spain asked Bayezid II for permission to set up printing presses in Turkey, he consented on condition that they did not print any books in Turkish or Arabic, and confined themselves to Hebrew and European languages.
The Ottoman state was born on the frontier between Islam and Christendom. For centuries the Ottomans and other Turkish principalities of march-warriors in Anatolia cohabited with Byzantium in the tense intimacy of frontier warfare-imitating and influencing one another in tactics and weapons, in clothing and diet, drawing closer to one another through the subtler workings of conversion, of assimilation, and of marriage by capture. Not a few of the Turkish frontiersmen were suckled and weaned by Greek mothers-not a few of the noble families of the early Empire were descended from converted Greeks. In the popular religion of both Greek Christians and Turkish Muslims, there are countless common saints, common festivals, and common holy places, which each group reinterpreted in its own way. Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207-73), the great mystical poet of Konya- no Anatolian but an immigrant from Central Asia-tried his hand at Greek verse; even Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror had Greek books and a Greek biographer, and the Sultans more than once called on the services of Greek architects for their mosques and Greek shipwrights for their fleet.
Byzantine influence on the Ottomans was limited in the main to material things, and to the popular level of religious belief and practice. It died out in the course of the fifteenth century, under the impact of two events: the incorporation of the former frontier lands into the sphere of the old, classical Islamic civilization, and the decay and disappearance of Byzantium itself. Thereafter the general adoption of traditional Islamic institutions, attitudes, and conceptions served to reduce and to neutralize any influences emanating from the conquered House of War.
It is often overlooked that Western influence on the Turks is in a sense almost as old as that of Byzantium. Constantinople, two and a half centuries before its conquest by the Turks, had suffered a more shattering conquest by Western invaders, and both the city and many of the provinces had been subjected to Western European government and institutions. Late Byzantine feudalism, which helped to shape the Ottoman system of military fiefs, had itself been reshaped under the impact of the Frankish feudalism of the Latin Empire of Constantinople and its dependent and successor principalities. When the Ottomans conquered the Morea, most of it had been ruled for the previous two centuries by French barons, Catalan adventurers, or Florentine financiers; its law was the feudal Assises de Romanie, based on the Assises de la Haute Cour de Jerusalem, a purely Western system of feudal law elaborated by the Crusaders in Palestine and later imposed by them on other countries which they conquered.
Once established in their new Imperial role, the Ottoman Turks found many points of contact with the West. What the Byzantine Empire had once been to the medieval Caliphate, Western Europe now was to the Ottomans-a rival empire and a rival civilization, the seat of a rival religion which it was the sacred duty of the Islamic Empire to subjugate and convert. Just as the Ottomans had succeeded the Caliphs as the sovereigns of Islam, so the Kings of Frangistan had succeeded the Emperors of Constantinople as Lords of the House of War. And as Baghdad had borrowed Greek fire from Constantinople, Istanbul might borrow artillery from Europe.
But in the intervals of war there was peace, and commerce; European diplomats sat in Istanbul; European merchants and scholars travelled in the Ottoman realms. Many came to stay; renegades and adventurers seeking a career in the Ottoman service, refugees from political or religious persecution, seeking shelter under the Ottoman power. Such was the mass migration of Jews from Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, bringing with them printing, and some medical and technological knowledge.
It was chiefly in the arts of war that the Turks were ready to turn to Europe for instruction. There are some rather dubious references to the use of firearms by the Ottomans as early as the fourteenth century. Their use of siege artillery is well attested in the early fifteenth century, and by the middle of the century they were already using field-guns at the second battle of Kossovo (1448). Hand-guns were introduced at about the same time, and before very long gunners, musketeers, bombardiers, and sappers begin to play a central role in the Ottoman armed forces.
The Ottomans showed equal readiness in adopting European techniques of naval construction and warfare. In the fifteenth century Venice was their model in shipbuilding, and improvements made by Venetian shipyards in the design and construction of galleys were closely watched and imitated. In the same way, in the course of the seventeenth century the Barbary Corsairs were followed by their Turkish overlords in building and operating large, square-rigged sailing ships, mounting twenty guns and capable of making long voyages on the open seas.
With European naval construction, they also acquired a working knowledge of European maps and navigation. During the sixteenth century many European charts and portulans fell into Turkish hands. Of the theory of cartography they knew little enough, but they were soon able to copy and to use European sailing charts, and to make coastal charts of their own. Piri Reis (d. G. 1550), the first noteworthy Ottoman cartographer, seems to have known Western languages and made use of Western maps and geographical books. Haci Halife (1608-57) was acquainted with the Atlas Minor of Mercator, which he translated into Turkish with the help of a French renegade in 1653-5. He incorporated data from this and from other standard European geographical works of the time, by Ortelius, Cluverius, and others, in his Cihannume, or World-Mirror, for long the standard Ottoman geographical work. Another indication of Ottoman interest in Western geographical science at that time was the invitation issued by Murad IV (1623-40) to the Dutch Orientalist Golius to make a map of the Ottoman dominions. The invitation was not accepted.
The first deliberate attempt at a Westernizing policy-the first conscious step, that is, towards the imitation and adoption of certain selected elements from the civilization of Western Europe -came in the early eighteenth century. The treaties of Carlowitz (1699) and Passarowitz (1718) had given formal expression and recognition to two humiliating defeats of the Ottoman Empire by the Austrians and their allies. On the other hand the example of Russia under Peter the Great suggested that a vigorous programme of Westernization and modernization might enable the Empire to throw off its weakness and once again become the terror of its enemies.
A Turkish document, written about the time of the treaty of Passarowitz, contains an imaginary conversation between a Christian and an Ottoman officer, in which they discuss the military and political situation. The purpose of the document appears to have been to prepare Ottoman ruling circles to accept defeat, by depicting as darkly as possible the unfavourable situation of the Empire. The conversation also, however, makes a comparison between the two armies, to the great disadvantage of the Ottomans, and would appear to embody a plea for military reform.
The statesman chiefly responsible for the first attempt at reform was Damad Ibrahim Pasa, who became deputy Grand Vezir in 1716 and was Grand Vezir from 1718 to 1730. As soon as peace was restored he sent an Embassy to Vienna, in 1719, and in I721 sent Yirmisekiz Mehmed Said Efendi as ambassador to Paris, with instructions to 'make a thorough study of the means of civilization and education, and report on those capable of application' in Turkey. One of these, as we shall see, was printing. As early as 1716 a French officer, de Rochefort, submitted a project for the formation of a corps of foreign engineer officers in the Ottoman army, which, however, came to nothing. In 1720 another Frenchman, the convert David known as Gercek, organized a fire brigade in Istanbul-the first of the long series of reforms in municipal services that were to follow in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the admiralty and navy too the new mood was felt. The admiralty offices were reorganized, and an important change made in ship construction. The three-decker galleon was first built in Turkish dockyards in 1682, but few were made. Under Ahmed III the construction of these ships was resumed and improved, and the galley began to disappear from the Ottoman fleets.
These exchanges with Europe began to produce, for the first time, some slight impact on cultural and social life. The wave of Turquerie started by the Turkish Embassy in Paris in 1721 had its counterpart in a rather smaller wave of Frankish manners and styles in Istanbul. French gardens, French decorations, French furniture acquired a brief vogue in palace circles. The Sultan himself built a fountain outside the palace gates which shows a distinctly rococo style. The Flemish painter van Mour (1671-1737) enjoyed some success in the Turkish capital, where he painted the portraits of the Sultan, the Grand Vezir, and other dignitaries.
Towards the end of Ahmed III's reign the unwonted interval of peace which the Empire had enjoyed after the treaty of Passarowitz was disturbed by the outbreak of war on the eastern frontier, against Persia. In 1730 an Ottoman defeat at the hands of Nadir Khan, who had just risen to power in Persia, touched off a popular revolt in Istanbul, where resentment had been growing against the extravagance of the court and the 'Frankish manners' of the palace circles. The Sultan was forced to abdicate, and the Grand Vezir and other dignitaries were put to death.
The setback was only temporary. The most important Western innovations of the preceding reign-printing and naval reforms- were maintained, and soon a new start was made on the larger and more pressing problem of military reform. Already before the revolt Ibrahim Muteferrika, the director of the printing press, had presented a memorandum to Ibrahim Pasa; at the beginning of 1732 he printed it, and presented it to the new Sultan Mahmud I (1730-54). The memorandum, forty-nine pages long, is divided into three parts. In the first the author points out the importance, to all states and peoples, of a well-ordered system of government, and describes and comments on thevarious kinds of regime existing in other countries. In the second, he urges on his reader the importance of scientific geography, as a means of knowing one's own lands and those of one's neighbours, as a useful adjunct to the military art, and as an aid to provincial and military administration; in the third, he examines the different kinds of armed forces maintained by the kings of Christendom, their training, organization, and discipline, in camp and in the field, their methods of waging war, and their military laws. Ibrahim, himself a convert, was careful to speak with proper disgust and contempt of the Frankish infidels, but at the same time makes clear the superiority of the Frankish armies, and the importance for the Ottomans of imitating them.
Another convert was conveniently at hand to help in taking the first steps. The Count de Bonneval, a French nobleman, had, after a somewhat chequered career, arrived in Turkey in 1729. Apparently to avoid being extradited, he adopted Islam, took the name Ahmed, and entered the Ottoman service. In September 1731 he was summoned by the Grand Vezir Topal Osman Pasa, who gave him the task of reforming the Bombardier Corps on European lines. In 1734 a new training centre, the Hendesehane, or school of geometry, was opened in Uskudar, and in the following year de Bonneval was made a pasha of two tails and given the rank and title of Chief Bombardier.
This school, and the 'corps of mathematicians' established under the command of de Bonneval's adopted son Suleyman, were not of long duration. The Janissaries were of course bitterly opposed to any such new-fangled notions, and despite an apparent attempt to keep the project secret from them, they found out about the school and forced its closure.
The effort was not, however, entirely wasted. One of the teachers of the school, a certain Mehmed Said, the son of a Mufti from Anatolia, invented a 'two-arc quadrant' for the use of artillerymen and wrote a treatise illustrated with geometrical diagrams. Other writings of the time include a treatise on trigonometry, apparently based in part on Western sources, an anonymous Turkish translation of a treatise on military science by Count Montecuccoli, some medical works, and a few writings on European history and affairs. Some interest in Westernization was also shown by the Grand Vezir Ragib Pasa, an admirer of European science who is credited with having desired the translation into Turkish of a treatise of Voltaire on the philosophy of Newton. It is reported by some sources that in 1759 he reopened the school of geometry, which functioned secretly in a private house at Karaagac, near Sutluce.
A more serious effort began in 1773, with the opening of a new school of mathematics for the navy. In this and related projects the Turks were helped by the Baron de Tott, an artillery officer of French nationality and Hungarian origin, who had come to Turkey some years previously to study Turkish. He helped to form and train new corps of engineers and artillery, reorganized the qun-foundry and for the first vear or two taught rectilinear trigonometry and other subjects at the school of mathematics. In these tasks he was assisted by some other foreigners, notably a Scottish renegade called Campbell, who after his conversion to Islam was known by the doubly incongruous name of Ingiliz Mustafa. It was he who replaced de Tott as chief instructor after the latter's return to France in 1775.
The nucleus of the student body was provided by the surviving pupils of the earlier schools, who were transferred to the new centre, as well as of serving naval officers. De Tott in his memoirs speaks of his 'white-bearded captains' and of 'sixty-year-old pupils'. In the following years the naval school of mathematics was expanded and developed, and provided the model for the military, engineering, medical, and other schools set up by Selim III and his successors. We have a description of it by the Venetian priest Toderini, who was in Istanbul between 1781 and 1786. He found it well equipped with European maps and appliances, and with a library of European books, some with Turkish translations. There were over fifty pupils, sons of captains and Turkish gentlemen.
The Russian annexation of the Crimea in 1783 gave the impetus to a new programme of reform, in which the Ottoman government was encouraged by the French, who were apprehensive of a possible Russian threat to their interests in the Levant. In October 1784, at the initiative of the Grand Vezir Halil Hamid Pasa and with the assistance of the French Embassy, a new training course was instituted, with two French engineer officers as instructors, working with Armenian interpreters. After the outbreak of war with Austria and Russia in 1787 the French instructors were recalled, as their continued presence was regarded as a breach of neutrality. This, and the strains of the war itself, hampered the development of the new schools, which remained inactive until the restoration of peace in 1792 gave the new Sultan, Selim III, the opportunity to make a new start.
The most important technical innovation from Europe outside the military field was undoubtedly printing. In a sense this had been known to the Turks for centuries. In the fourteenth century the Mongol rulers of Persia had printed and issued paper money, in obvious imitation of Chinese models, and at an earlier date the Turkic peoples of the Chinese borderlands had made use of a form of block-printing, common in the Far East. But all this had long since been forgotten, and the Ottoman Turks, like other Middle Eastern Muslim peoples, had no knowledge of book printing until it was introduced from Europe. This happened at the end of the fifteenth century, when Jewish refugees from Spain set up printing presses on Ottoman soil. The first Jewish press was established in Constantinople about 1493 or 1494, and others followed in various cities, notably in Salonika, which became the main Jewish publishing centre.
The Jews were followed by the other religious minorities. In 1567 an Armenian press was established in Constantinople by Apkar of Sivas, a priest who had studied typography in Venice, and a Greek press in 1627 by Nicodemus Metaxas, with machinery and type imported from England.
The ban on printing in Turkish or Arabic remained effective until the early eighteenth century, when its relaxation was due largely to the efforts of two men. One of them was Said Celebi, son of the famous Yirmisekiz Mehmed Said, who had gone to Paris as Turkish ambassador in 1721. Said Celebi had accompanied his father on his journey, and during his stay in France seems to have acquired an interest in the art of printing and a conviction of its usefulness. On his return to Turkey he attempted to secure the support of the Grand Vezir for the setting up of a Turkish printing press in Constantinople. In this, despite the opposition of religious conservatives and the strong vested interest of the scribes and calligraphers, he was successful.
He found a kindred spirit in Ibrahim Muteferrika the true founder and director of the first Turkish printing press. Ibrahim was of Hungarian origin, and had been a student in the Unitarian seminary in Kolosvar. In about 1691 he either fled to or was captured by the Turks, and found his way to Istanbul. He became a convert to Islam, and made a career in the Ottoman service. In collaboration with Said Celebi, he drafted a memorandum on the usefulness of printing, which was submitted to the Grand Vezir. Support came from an unexpected quarter when the Seyh-ul-Islam Abdullah Efendi was persuaded to issue a fetva authorizing the printing of books in Turkish on subjects other than religion. The printing of the Koran, of books on Koranic exegesis, traditions, theology, and holy law was excluded as unthinkable. Finally, on 5 July 1727, an Imperial ferman was issued giving permission for the establishment of a Turkish press and the printing of Turkish books 'in the high, God-guarded city of Constantinople'.
Presses and types were at first obtained from the local Jewish and Christian printers already working in the city, and recourse was also made to Jewish type-founders and compositors. Later, presses and types were imported from Europe, especially from Leiden and Paris. Some specialists in different aspects of typography were also brought from Germany and other European countries.
The first book appeared in February 1729. By the time the press was closed in 1742, seventeen books had been printed. Most of them were in Turkish, and dealt with history, geography, and language. They included, however, a Turkish grammar in French, an account by Mehmed Said Celebi of his Embassy in France in 1721, and a short treatise by Ibrahim Muteferrika himself on the science of tactics as practiced by the European states. The press was reopened in 1784, since when the development of printing in Turkey proceeded rapidly.
Turning from gunnery and typography to knowledge and ideas, we find far fewer traces of Western influence, for it is here that the Muslim rejection of Christianity and all that came from it was most effective. Though clever with their hands in making useful devices like guns, clocks, and printing presses, the Europeans were still benighted and barbarous infidels, whose history, philosophy, science, and literature, if indeed they existed at all, could hold nothing of value for the people of the universal Islamic Empire. During the reign of Mehmed II there was indeed the beginning of a scientific renaissance, but under his successors, in the words of a modern Turkish writer, 'the scientific current broke against the dikes of literature and jurisprudence'.
In these dikes there were, however, a few small leaks, through which some knowledge of the West percolated into the circles of Muslim scholarship. Among the many thousands of historical manuscripts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries found in the libraries of Istanbul, none deal with Christian Europe, for the Muslim, like other civilizations before and after it, equated universal history with its own. But there are a few signs of interest. Ottoman chroniclers occasionally report events in darkest Frangistan, and one of them, Ibrahim Pecevi (1571-c. 1650), even went so far as to use, through a translator, Hungarian Latin chronicles for his history of the Turkish campaigns in Hungary. Haci Halife, whose interest in European maps has already been mentioned, is also credited with having prepared, probably in collaboration with a Frankish colleague, a history of the Franks, and Huseyin Hezarfen, whose observations on the state of the Empire have already been cited, sought out the company of such European visitors to Istanbul as Galland, Marsigli, and Prince Kantemir, and made a study of European history. A little later Ahmed ibn Lutfullah, known as Muneccimbasi (d. 1702), wrote a universal history which includes a brief account of the principal monarchies of Europe-the second, it would seem, in Islamic historiography. In the course ofthe eighteenth century, no doubt in connexion with the military training schools, a small number of books on European affairs were prepared or translated.
The occasional Ottoman interest in European geography has already been mentioned. In addition there was some slight interest in European medicine. In the seventeenth century a Turkish translation appeared of a European treatise on syphilis, and one or two passages in other medical works suggest an acquaintance with European writings. In general, however, Ottoman medicine remained faithful to Galen and Avicenna, as Ottoman science to Aristotle, Ptolemy, and their commentators. The discoveries of Paracelsus and Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo were as alien and irrelevant to the Ottomans as were the arguments of Luther and Calvin.
Of the aesthetic life of the West little or nothing was known in Turkey. Of Western art there was some slight influence; several of the Sultans called on the services of Western portrait painters, and Western influences undoubtedly affected Turkish architecture and decoration in the early eighteenth century. Of Western literature and music practically nothing was known. The great Western movements of ideas passed without even an echo in the lands of Islam.
With the French Revolution, for the first time, we find a great movement of ideas penetrating the barrier that separated the House of War from the House of Islam, finding a ready welcome among Muslim leaders and thinkers, and affecting to a greater or lesser degree every layer of Muslim society.
The success of Western ideas in the Islamic world in the nineteenth century is often attributed to the advance of the material might of the West-to the establishment of European economic, political, and eventually, military supremacy in much of the Islamic world. The Muslim, no less than other men, is inclined to listen with greater sympathy and respect to the beliefs of those whom God has favoured with power and wealth in this world, and the visible success of the West was certainly a contributory factor, if not indeed a prerequisite, in making Western ideas acceptable to him. But this is not a sufficient explanation. The age of the Renaissance and the Discoveries saw great Christian advances in the western Mediterranean and in Asia, which, if to some extent offset by the still formidable power of the Ottomans, might nevertheless have produced some effect on the Muslims of the invaded areas, had might alone been sufficient to impel acceptance. Nor do European wealth and power explain why the ideas of the French Revolution, rather than any other of the competing Western modes of thought, should have won such wide acceptance. The initial attraction of these ideas-which were later modified to respond to the political needs of the time and place-is rather to be found in their secularism. The French Revolution is the first great social upheaval in Europe to find intellectual expression in purely non-religious terms. Secularism as such has no great attraction for Muslims, but in a Western movement that was non-Christian, even anti-Christian, and whose divorce from Christianity was stressed by its leading exponents, the Muslim world might hope to find the elusive secret of Western power without compromising its own religious beliefs and traditions.
During the century or so that followed the first percolation of these new ideas from Europe, the channels of transmission became broader and more numerous, the trickle grew to a river and then to a flood. While Western material culture transformed the structure and aspect of Islamic society, often for the worse, ideas from the West were affecting the very basis of group cohesion, creating new patterns of identity and loyalty, and providing both the objectives and the formulation of new aspirations. These new ideas may be summarized in three words: liberty, equality, and-not fraternity, but what is perhaps its converse, nationality. Before 1800 the word liberty in the languages of Islam was primarily a legal term, denoting the opposite of slavery. In the course of the nineteenth century it acquired a new political connotation from Europe, and came to be the war-cry of the struggle against both domestic despotism and foreign imperialism. Organized 1iberty required constitutions, representative government, the rule of law-and these in turn involved secular authority and legislation, with a new class of lawyers and politicians, different from the Doctors of the Holy Law and the agents of autocratic rule of former times.
Equality tended to take on a different meaning. Social and economic inequality were not major grievances. Islamic society did not know the rigid social barriers and caste privileges of pre-revolutionary Europe; its undeveloped economy limited the opportunities both of acquiring and of spending wealth, and thus prevented the growth of glaring disparities between rich and poor. To some extent the gulf between the two was still bridged by the corporative structure of society and the moral and charitable traditions of Islam. But if appeals to the individual had little effect, appeals to the group struck a more responsive chord. Soon the demand was raised for equality between nations, in time linked with the new Western principle of national self-determination.
The Western concept of the nation as a linguistic, racial, and territorial entity was not unknown to the Islamic Orient, but was never the primary basis of group identity. This was the brotherhood of faith within the religious community, reinforced by common dynastic allegiance. To this day the Western notions of patriotism and nationality have never entirely superseded the older pattern-indeed, though dynastic loyalties have faded, religious loyalty is in our own day showing renascent vigour. The history of the reform movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is largely concerned with the attempt by Western-educated intellectuals to impose a Western pattern of secular political classification and organization on the religious community of Islam.
The crucial period in the transmission of the ideas of the French Revolution to the Muslim Turks was the years 1792-1807, beginning with the military reforms of Selim III and ending with his deposition. During these years, while the Revolution itself was still in progress, the first vital penetration of ideas took place, opening the way to the great flood which, in the course of the last century and a half, has transformed the outlook, thought, and self-awareness not only of Turkey but of all Islam. It is therefore necessary to give close attention first to the channels through which these ideas were transmitted from France to Turkey, second to the immediate response to these ideas of the Turks of that time.
By far the most important of these was military instruction. From Renaissance times onwards Islam had been the pupil of Christendom in the arts of war, especially in the more technical branches such as engineering, navigation, and artillery. For some time the imposing military facade of the Ottoman Empire masked the growing internal decline in skill and inventiveness, which found expression in the prominence of Western renegades or employees among the gun-founders and gunners of the Ottoman armies and the shipwrights and navigators of the Ottoman fleets. By the eighteenth century the rulers of the Empire, stimulated by a series of defeats at the hands of their despised Christian adversaries, began to give intermittent attention to the need for modernizing the equipment and training of their armies.
The restoration of peace in 1792, and the preoccupation of Europe with the problems of the French Revolution, gave the new Sultan Selim III the opportunity to plan and in part execute a large-scale reform of the Ottoman armed forces, intended to bring them up to the level of contemporary Western armies in technical equipment, training, and skill.
Such attempts at reform as had been made during the eighteenth century had all been under the guidance of French instructors usually working in the French language. The latest was that of 1784, while Selim was still heir-apparent. In this project both the initial impulse and the main guidance came from the government of France, and Selim himself had entered into correspondence with Louis XVI, who had given him good if somewhat patronizing advice. Such nuclei oftrained officers as were available in Istanbul had been taught by Frcnch teachers and with French textbooks. The only treatises available in Turkish were translations from French, printed at the press of the French Embassy-the best equipped press in the city. What little knowledge of European languages the Turks possessed was of French.
It was therefore natural that the Sultan should turn once again to France for help in preparing his New Order-Nizam-i Cedid- in the armed forces. There was an additiolial reason for him to do so. In an exchange of notes written on the eve of the launching of the military reforms, the Grand Vezir reported to the Sultan the arrival of letters from the King of France on the New Order- Nizam-i Cedid-that had arisen in France as a result of the recent upheaval, and the Sultan expressed interest in this New Order. It is not without significance that in these notes the same terms applied to the 'New Order' in France as was shortly afterwards applied to the whole programme of reform in Turkey.
At the same time Selim sent a special envoy, Ebu Bekir Ratib Efendi, to make direct inquiries in Europe. Ratib Efendi went to Vienna in 1791, with instructions to study Austrian conditions and also to gather information on other European countries. On his return in May 1792, he presented a detailed report on the military systems of the European states, and especially of Austria, as well as on government, society, and political thought. One of his informants inVienna seems to have beentheAustrian apprentice dragoman Joseph Hammer, later famous as the author of the Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches and other standard works on Turkey.
In the autumn of 1791, while the returning Ottoman army was still at Silistria, the Sultan issued a command to twenty-two civil, military, and religious dignitaries requesting them to set forth their views on the causes of the weakness of the Empire, and their proposals for its reform. The twenty-two included two Christians, a French officer called Bertrand or Brentano, serving with the Ottoman army, and the famous Mouradgea d'Ohsson, the Armenian dragoman of the Swedish Embassy in Istanbul. They presented their replies in the form of Layiha-memorials, a term reminiscent of the French cahiers of 1789. Though no doubt accidental, the resemblance was a portentous one.
All agreed in laying the main stress on the need for military reform, but differed as to how best to accomplish it. On the one hand were the conservatives, who sought to recover the military glories of the Ottoman golden age by reverting to its military methods. Then there were the romantics and compromisers, who sought various ways of insinuating Frankish training and weapons into the existing military order by claiming that this was in fact a return to the pure Ottoman past. Finally there were the radicals, who believed that the old army was incapable of reform, and urged the Sultan to set up a new one, trained, equipped, and armed from the start along European lines. It was to this view that the Sultan himself inclined.
From the first these proposals for reform aroused the bitterest opposition, and the reformist memorials were attacked with spite and ridicule even in the palace. But the Sultan proceeded with resolution and energy. Setting up a small committee of reform supporters to assist him, he promulgated, in 1792 and 1793, a whole series of new instructions and regulations which came to be known collectively as the Nizam-i Cedid. They included new regulations on provincial governorships, on provincial taxation, on the control of the grain trade, and other administrative and fiscal matters. By far the most important, however, were those providing for a new corps of regular infantry, trained and equipped on European lines. To finance this experiment, a special new treasury was set up, with revenues from escheated and forfeited fiefs and from newly imposed taxes on spirits, tobacco, coffee, and other commodities. It is both interesting and significant that the term Nizam-i Cedid, originally applied to the regulations of the new system, came to be used almost exclusively of the new, regular troops established under it. Just as centuries earlier the Arabic abstract noun sultan, authority, had come to designate a man, so now did Nizam-i Cedid, new order, become the name of a body of men.
A,central place in Selim's projects was assigned to his new military and naval schools, which provided training in gunnery, fortification, navigation, and ancillary sciences. In these schools Selim relied, very heavily, on French help. French officers were recruited as teachers and instructors, French was made a com pulsory language for all students, and a library of some 400 European books acquired, most of them French, and including, significantly, a set of the Grande Encyclopedie.
The change of regime in France in no way discouraged the Sultan from seeking French aid. In the autumn of 1793 the Ottoman government sent to Paris a list of officers and technicians whom it wished to recruit from France; as late as 1795 the Reis- ul-Kuttab, Ratib Efendi, addressed a similar but longer list to the Committee of Public Safety. In 1796 the French ambassador General Aubert Dubayet brought a whole body of French military experts to Constantinople with him. French co-operation in the Ottoman military reform was interrupted by the Franco-Turkish war of 1798-1802, but was later resumed, and reached its peak with the mission to Turkey of General Sebastiani in 1806-7. Though the pure wine of revolution was by now diluted with Caesarism, this more familiar flavour, with the added spice of victory, can only have made it more palatable.
The result of all this was to create a new social element- a class of young army and naval officers, familiar with some aspects of Western civilization through study, reading, and personal contact, acquainted with at least one Western language -usually French-and accustomed to look up to Western experts as their mentors and guides to new and better ways. These men could not, like most of their contemporaries, despise the infidel and barbarous West from an altitude of comfortable and unassailable ignorance-on the contrary, for reasons both of inclination and of interest they were aligned with the Westernizers against the reactionaries. But these neophytes of Western culture, filled with an often naive enthusiasm for things Western, soon found that the West had more to offer than mathematics and ballistics, and that their knowledge of French enabled them to read other things besides their textbooks. Some of these other things were available to them in their own college library. We may assume that others were brought to their notice by French instructors who, after 1792, were chosen and appointed by the government of the French Republic.
During the same period, another of the reforms of Selim III opened a second window to the West-that of diplomacy. Until the end of the eighteenth century the Ottoman Empire maintained no permanent diplomatic representation in foreign countries. From time to time a special mission was sent to one or another foreign capital, for a specific purpose-but barely a score of these are recorded in the whole period up to 1792. For its normal dealings with foreign powers the Empire preferred to rely on the foreign ambassadors resident in Istanbul. Even with those, business was carried on chiefly through the intermediary of local Christian dragomans. Very few even of the highest officials of the state had any knowledge of a Western language or any direct experience of Europe. In earlier times a very important role had been played by renegades, men of European birth and education, who often rose to the highest positions in the Ottoman service, and brought with them invaluable skills and knowledge. These were, however, rarely transmitted, and in any case by the eighteenth century ax-Christians had ceased to play any significant role in the councils of state, which were now more and more monopolized by the Muslim Turks.
It was no doubt with the intention of securing more direct and reliable information on European countries and affairs, as well as bringing Turkey into line with the normal practice of Western states, that in 1792 Selim III resolved to establish regular and permanent Ottoman Embassies in the major European capitals. The first was in London in 1793, followed after an interval by Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, where in 1796 Seyyid Ali Efendi arrived as the first Onoman ambassador to the French Republic. Among other duties, these ambassadors were instructed to study the institutions of the countries to which they were accredited, and to acquire 'languages, knowledge, and sciences useful to servants of the Empire'. Most of these first diplomats were Ottoman palace or chancery officials of the old school, ignorant of Western languages and conservative in outlook. Most of them, to judge by their dispatches, learned little about the countries to which they were sent, and were not greatly impressed by what they did learn. But they did not travel alone. Besides the inevitable Greek dragomans, they took with them young Turkish secretaries, whose duty it was to study the languages of Europe-and especially French-and to learn something of the ways of Western society.
These missions thus gave an opportunity to a number of young men to reside for a while in a European city, master a European language, and make the acquaintance of some of the revolu tionary ideas current among their European contemporaries. Some of them, on their return, became officials at the Porte, where they formed a Westward-looking minority among the bureaucratic hierarchy similar to that created among the officers by the military and naval reforms.
So far we have spoken only of Muslims-but there were of course other elements in the Empire, Christian and also Jewish. The Jews seem to have been surprisingly little affected by Western influences in this period, and with one or two exceptions played no significant role. The Christians on the other hand-especially the Greek and Armenian elite of the capital-had for long been on terms of familiarity with the West, and thanks to their monopoly of the knowledge of Western languages had managed to gain an important position in the Ottoman state and economy. In the late seventeenth century the Phanariot Greeks gradually ousted the renegades and Levantines who had hitherto served as interpreters in dealings with foreign embassies. The Greeks, and to a lesser extent the Armenians, were familiar enough with Western- culture-many of the wealthier families had for long been in the habit of sending their sons to be educated in Italian universities, especially in Padua. They were thus prepared, both linguistically and intellectually, to receive the new Western ideas of their time.
On the whole, however, the influence of the ideas of the Revolution on the Christians of Istanbul was not considerahle. The churches of course used their authority against it; the wealthy and conservative Greek aristocracy too, recognizing the danger to the existing Ottoman order, preferred at first to preserve a regime in which they had so considerable an interest. Some converts to French ideas were found, however, among the Christians, more especially when the French began to address themselves directly to Greek and other national aspirations. Some Ottoman Christians-as for example Mouradgea d'Ohsson -may have played some small part in influencing Ottoman policy towards the French Republic; later they certainly played a vital role in bringing the ideas of the Revolution, with explosive effect, to the peoples of the Balkans. But their role in bringing Western ideas to the Muslim Turks is small and indirect, and is in the main limited to their functions as interpreters, language teachers, and translators. As Christians and as subject peoples they were doubly discredited, and unlikely to gain much of a hearing for any new ideas they might attempt to convey- the more so since their own secular and religious leaders were opposed to them. If anything, the minorities acted as a cushion- absorbing the impact of regular Western commercial and diplomatic activities in Turkey, and thus protecting the Turks from direct contact and contamination. What they did do, how ever, was to provide a nucleus of people familiar, on the one hand, with Turkish, on the other, with French or Italian, and thus able, when required, to translate Western books, to act as interpreters for Western instructors, and to teach Western languages to aspiring Turks.
If the channels through which the ideas of the Revolution might flow into Turkey existed, their use was not left to chance, but was the subject of sustained efforts by the French. Partly out of general missionary enthusiasm, partly in order to secure the support of the still not negligible Ottoman power at a critical time, the French devoted much attention to winning sympathy in the Ottoman capital and provinces. From the first an important section of the French community in Istanbul adhered to the Revolution, and aroused the ire of the Austrian and Prussian embassies by the wearing of revolutionary emblems and the holding of revolutionary meetings. In June 1793 citizen Descorches (ci-devant Marquis de Sainte-Croix) arrived in Istanbul as emissary of the French Republic, with the double mission of winning Ottoman support for French policy and Ottoman sympathy for the Revolution. The inauguration of the republican flag was made the occasion of a public celebration, culminating in a salute from two French ships moored off Seraglio Point. They flew the colours of the Ottoman Empire, of the French and American republics, 'and those of a few other powers that had not sullied their arms in the impious league of tyrants'. In a solemn ceremony a tree of liberty was planted in the soil of Turkey.
The French government also took further steps to encourage its growth. In April 1795 the Foreign Ministry in Paris informed Descorches that the Committee of Public Safety had decided to re-establish the French printing press in Istanbul, and announced the dispatch of Louis Allier, director of the French Imprimerie nationale, to take charge of it. Three other assistants were sent, together with two presses and a quantity of French type. The ambassador was instructed to use this press to the best advantage of the Republic.
Far more important, however, than any pamphlets, bulletins, or newspapers was the effect of the unrecorded efforts of individual Frenchmen in Istanbul and elsewhere, who abandoned the mutually agreed exclusiveness that had kept Franks and Muslims from all but formal contacts in the past, and for the first time sought the intimacy and cultivated the friendship of Muslim Turks. Turkish-speaking Frenchmen, native Christians, and some Turks began to form a new society in the capital, in which the needs and ideas of the time were discussed, and the enthusiastic optimism of revolutionary France found a response among the few but highly placed Turks that looked to the West for guidance and inspiration.
The Revolution seems to have made little immediate impression on the Turks, who, like other contemporary observers, at first regarded it as a purely internal aflfair of no great consequence. Even when the Revolution spread by war to the neighbouring countries and convulsed Western Europe, the Turks still regarded it as an internal affair of Christendom, having no relevance to the Ottoman Empire, which as a Muslim state was immune to this contagion. Diplomatically, the preoccupation of the Christian powers with the revolutionary wars was even of benefit to the Porte. Ahmed Efendi, the Privy Secretary of Selim III, noted this in his journal in January 1792, and concluded: 'May God cause the upheaval in France to spread like syphilis to the enemies of the Empire, hurl them into prolonged conflict with one another, and thus accomplish results beneficial to the Empire, amen.'
A new phase began with the partition of the territories of the Republic of Venice by the treaty of Campo Formio of 17 October 1797. By the fifth article of this treaty, the Ionian islands, together with the former Venetian possessions on the adjoining coasts of Albania and Greece, were annexed to the French Republic. France, the traditional ally of the Ottoman Empire, had become her neighbour-and ancient friendship could not stand the shock. Soon alarming reports began to come in from Morea-of liberty and equality on the borders of the Empire, of speeches and ceremonies recalling the ancient glories and liberties of Hellas and promising their restoration-of French intelligence with rebels and dissidents in Ottoman Greece and French plans to annex Morea and Crete. French reassurances failed to comfort the Divan, and when General Tamara, the new Russian ambassador, repeated the warnings of his predecessor against the dangers of revolutionary France, he was listened to with greater attention. Before long still more alarming reports began to arrive of French naval preparations in Toulon, and of a projected French attack on the Ottoman dominions. In the spring of 1798 the Reis-ul-Kditab, Ahmed Atif Efendi, was instructed to prepare a memorandum for the Divan on the political situation, and on the invitation extended by the Allies to the Porte to join an anti-French coalition. His report is worth quoting at some length. He begins with a general account of the French Revolution, presented, in accordance with Ottoman politeness, as something well known to his readers, but clearly intended to remove their illusions as to the real purport of the events in France.
" It is one of the things known to all well-informed persons that the conflagration of sedition and wickedness that broke out a few years ago in France, scattering sparks and shooting flames of mischief and tumult in all directions, had been conceived many years previously in the minds of certain accursed heretics, and had been a quiescent evil which they sought an opportunity to waken. In this way: the known and famous atheists Voltaire and Rousseau, and other materialists like them, had printed and published various works, consisting, God preserve us, of insults and vilification against the pure prophets and great kings, of the removal and abolition of all religion, and of allusions to the sweetness of equality and republicanism, all expressed in easily intelligible words and phrases, in the form of mockery, in the language of the common people. Finding the pleasure of novelty in these writings, most of the people, even youths and women, inclined towards them and paid close attention to them, so that heresy and wickedness spread like syphilis to the arteries of their brains and corrupted their beliefs. When the revolution became more intense, none took offence at the closing of churches, the killing and expulsion of monks, and the abolition of religion and doctrine: they set their hearts on equality and freedom, through which they hoped to attain perfect bliss in this world, in accordance with the lying teachings increasingly disseminated among the common people by this pernicious crew, who stirred up sedition and evil because of selfishness or self-interest. It is well known that the ultimate basis of the order and cohesion of every state is a firm grasp of the roots and branches of holy law, religion, and doctrine; that the tranquillity of the land and the control of the subjects cannot be encompassed by political means alone; that the necessity for the fear of God and the regard for retribution in the hearts of God's slaves is one of the unshakeably established divine decrees; that in both ancient and modern times every state and people has had its own religion, whether true or false. Nevertheless, the leaders of the sedition and evil appearing in France, in a manner without precedent, in order to facilitate the accomplishment of their evil purposes, and in utter disregard of the fearsome consequences, have removed the fear of God and the regard for retribution from the common people, made lawful all kinds of abominable deeds, utterly obliterated all shame and decency, and thus prepared the way for the reduction of the people of France to the state of cattle. Nor were they satisfied with this alone, but, finding supporters like themselves in every place, in order to keep other states busy with the protection of their own regimes and thus forestall an attack on themselves, they had their rebellious declaration which they call 'The Rights of Man' translated into all languages and published in all parts, and strove to incite the common people of the nations and religions to rebel against the kings to whom they were subject."
In this document the French Revolution is clearly regarded as a danger which threatened the Ottoman Empire as well as the Christian states. The need to overcome it overrode both the traditional enmity between the Porte and her neighbours and the traditional friendship between the Porte and France.
The French landing at Alexandria on I July 1798, and the subsequent activities of the French in Egypt and Palestine confirmed Atif's reasoning. The long-term effects of the impact of revolutionary France on the Arab peoples are well known. But even the immediate effects were disturbing enough to induce the Ottoman government to embark on what in our time is called ideological warfare. In a proclamation distributed in Arablc in Syria, Egypt, and Arabia, a detailed refutation of revolutionary doctrines was offered:
" In the Name of God, the Merciful and the Compassionate.
O you who believe in the unity of God, community of Muslims, know that
the French nation (may God devastate their dwellings and abase their banners)
are rebellious infidels and dissident evildoers; they do not believe in
the unity of the Lord of Heaven and Earth, nor in the mission of the intercessor
on the Day of Judgment, but have abandoned all religions, and denied the
after-world and its penalties . . . so that they have pillaged their churches
and the adornments of their crucifixes and attacked their priests and monks.
They assert that the books which the prophets brought are clear error,
and that the Koran, the Torah and the Gospels are nothing but lies and
idle talk . . . that all men are equal in humanity, and alike in being
men, none has any superiority or merit over any other, and every one himself
disposes of his soul and arranges his own livelihood in this life.... With
lying books and meretricious falsehoods they address themselves to every
party and say: 'We belong to you, to your religion and to your community',
and they make them vain promises, and utter fearful warnings. They are
wholly given up to villainy and debauchery, and ride the steed of perfidy
and presumption, and dive in the sea of error and impiety and are united
under the banner of Satan...."
It is interesting to note which characteristics of the French Revolution were most shocking to Atif Efendi and to the author of the proclamation, or were regarded by them as most likely to shock their readers. Neither makes any reference to the execution of Louis XVI, which had such an effect on Christian Europe. Von Knobelsdorf, the Prussian charge d'affaires in Istanbul, reported in a dispatch of 11 March 1793 that 'le Grand Seigneur, instruit jusqu'aux moindres details de ce crime affreux, en fut si affecte, qu'il en a ete malade; tout le Divan, tout le peuple en est saisi d'horreur'. That the Sultan was sick with horror at the execution of his royal brother is likely enough, but the violent death of a sovereign was too familiar a feature of political life in Istanbul to arouse much comment. Nor did even the abolition of the monarchy attract much attention. The Ottomans had been familiar for centuries with republican institutions in Venice and Ragusa, and there was nothing in the mere establishment of a republic to alarm them. What was by now disturbing ruling circles in Istanbul was the secularism of the Revolution-the separation of State and Church, the abandonment of all religious doctrines, the cult of reason. At first the attempt of the French to curry favour with the Muslims by stressing their rejection of Christianity and affecting a sympathy for Islam awoke some response, but soon-with Russian and Austrian assistance-the rulers of the Empire realized the dangers that this proffered friendship held for the traditional Islamic order and principles. Their fears were well grounded-the whole subsequent history of the Middle East has shown how great is the seductive power of a Western revolutionary ideology divorced from Western religion. Some indication of the degree of French success in this propaganda may be gathered from the frequent hostile allusions to it in Ottoman sources. At the same time they began to appreciate the explosive content of the ideas of equality and liberty, though it seems that the latter was at first regarded as a danger to the Christian subjects of the Porte rather than to the Turks themselves. While France and Turkey were at war, the communication of French ideas to the Turks was at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, the qwift and easy success of an army of less than 30,000 Frenchmen in conquering and ruling Egypt for over three years did not fail to impress, nor did the tolerance and sympathy shown by the French rulers of Egypt. By the terms of the peace, France withdrew from the Ionian islands as well as from Egypt, and thus terminated her brief tenure as a neighbour of the Porte. The voice of France, no longer shouting in Greek and in Arabic, became more audible in Istanbul.
While Brune, Ruffin, and Sebastiani worked to restore French influence at the Porte, a new Turkish ambassador, Mehmed Said Halet Efendi, served in Paris from 1802 to 1806. Halet was a convinced reactionary, and a hater of all things Western. But even his strictures on Frangistan, as he calls it, reveal how strong French influence was. Some extracts from his letters may illustrate the point:
" I ask you to pray for my safe return from this land of infidels, for I have come as far as Paris, but I have not yet seen the Frangistan that people speak of and praise; in what Europe these wonderful things and these wise Franks are, I do not know . . ."
"Glory be to God, the minds and beliefs of these people! It is a strange thing that this Frangistan, with the praises of which our ears have for so long been filled, we found to be not only unlike what was said, but the reverse...."
If anyone, with the intention either of intimidating you or of leading you astray, praises Frangistan, then ask him this question: 'Have you been to Europe, or have you not?' If he says: 'Indeed I have been there, and I enjoyed myself awhile', then assuredly he is a partisan and a spy of the Franks. If he says, 'No, I have not been, I know it from history books', then he is one of two things-either he is an ass, who takes heed of what the Franks write, or else he praises the Franks out of religious fanaticism...."
Despite Halet's encouragement of the reactionary party in Istanbul, French influence continued to grow. The French victories of 1805 and the humiliation of Austria and Russia delighted the Sultan, and decided him to recognize Napoleon as Emperor. In August 1806 Sebastiani returned to Istanbul, and was soon able to involve the Porte in war with both Russia and England. The repulse of an English naval squadron from Istanbul, thanks in no small measure to the energetic intervention of Sebastiani and a number of French officers and volunteers, gave the French ambassador a position of unparalleled ascendancy at the Porte. But it was this very victory of French influence and the prominence of this very victory of French influence and the prominence of Frenchmen in the defence of Istanbul that outraged Muslim sentiment, and helped to provoke the reactionary rebellion that culminated in the deposition of Selim III in May 1807.
The first trial of strength with the opponents of reform had already come in 1805, when the Sultan, hard pressed for troops, had ordered a general levy to provide men for the Nizam-i Cedid regiments, in place of the system of voluntary recruitment maintained until then. The levy was required from the Janissaries as well as from the general population. This bold measure brought to a head the smouldering resentment of the Janissaries and the ulema at the new order. Some brushes with Janissary regiments had already occurred in previous years. They now broke out in open revolt in Rumelia. A regiment of Nizem-i Cedid troops sent against them from Anatolia was crushingly defeated, and in the face of this crisis the reactionaries and the mob in the capital were able to enforce a suspension of the reforms. To avoid a general revolt, the Sultan was induced to dismiss his reformist advisers, send the Nizam troops back to Anatolia, and entrust the Grand Vezirate to the Aga ofthe Janissaries.
This capitulation postponed but did not avert the debacle. In May 1807 the Yamaks-auxiliary levies-mutinied against an order to put on European-style uniforms. The leader of the mutineers, Kabakci oglu Mustafa, was soon able to command powerful support in high quarters. He marched with his henchmen to Istanbul, where he set up headquarters in the Hippodrome and entered into close relations with the kaymakam of the Grand Vezir, Musa Pasa, and with the Chief Mutti. Armed with a list of the chief partisans of reform, he and his mutineers, with the help of a maddened mob, set to work to round them up and kill them. Some they killed in their own houses, others they dragged to the Hippodrome and slaughtered them there.
A decree by the Sultan abolishing the Nizam-i Cedid came too late to save his throne. On 29 May 1807, after a turbulent meeting at the Hippodrome, a deputation of Janissary officers called on the Chief Mufti to ask 'whether a Sultan, who by his actions and enactments had worked against the religious principles sanctified by the Koran, could continue to reign ?' The Mufti, with a becoming show of surprise and reluctance, then authorized the Sultan's deposition, in the interests of the Muslim religion and the house of Osman. Selim was accordingly deposed, and his cousin Mustafa was proclaimed Sultan The Nizam forces were at once dissolved, and the chief of the mutineers became commandant of the fortresses of the Bosporus. In the capital the real rulers were the kaymakam and the Chief Mufti.
It was a year or so after these events that Ahmed Asim Efendi, Imperial Historiographer, wrote his chronicle of the years 1791- 1808. From his narrative we can draw a clear impression of the general effect of French influences in Turkey during these years. Asim approves of the reforms, which he hoped would restore the military strength of the Empire, and in an interesting passage he describes how Russia emerged from weakness and barbarism to the status of a great power by borrowing the sciences and techniques of the West. But he is bitterly anti-Christian, considering all Christian powers as inveterate enemies of Islam, and foreseeing nothing but evil consequences from agreements with them. In particular he detests the French, and reviles the pro- French party in Turkey as deluded fools. His reference to the internal affairs of France are few and hostile. The republic was 'like the rumblings and crepitations of a queasy stomach', its principles consisted of 'the abandonment of religion and the equality of rich and poor'.
Of French activities in Turkey he has more to say. In a lengthy discussion of the successes and failures of the reforms of Selim III and the causes and circumstances of his fall, Asim Efendi devotes a great deal of attention to French influence. The French had presented themselves as friends and even as prospective converts to Islam, assuring the Turks of their hostility to Christianity and their intention of following the teachings of Muhammad. By intensive propaganda they had confused the minds 'not only of the great ones of the state but also of the common people'. To spread their pernicious ideas, they had sought the society of Turks, beguiling them with protestations of friendship and goodwill, and thus, through familiar and intimate social intercourse, had found many victims.
"Certain sensualists, naked of the garment of loyalty, from time to time learned politics from them; some, desirous of learning their language, took French teachers, acquired their idiom and prided themselves . . . on their uncouth talk. In this way they were able to insinuate Frankish customs in the hearts and endear their modes of thought to the minds of some people of weak mind and shallow faith. The sober-minded and far-sighted and the ambassadors of the other states foresaw the danger of this situation; full of alarm and disapproval, they reviled and condemned these things both implicitly and explicitly, and gave forewarning of the evil consequences to which their activities would give rise. This malicious crew and abominable band were full of cunning-first sowing the seed of their politics in the soil of the hearts of the great ones of the state, then, by incitement and seduction to their ways of thought, undermining-God preserve us- the principles of the Holy Law."
By the summer of 1807 the Emperor Napoleon was in alliance with his Imperial brother in Russia; the Sultan Selim III was dethroned and the party of reaction in power in Istanbul. The French Revolution seemed dead in the land of its birth, and its influence stifled in Turkey. But the cutting from the tree of liberty had struck root in the soil of Islam. It was to bear both sweet and bitter fruit.