22 • cHAPTeR 1
between the Ottoman empire and various european powers, europe-
ans in Ottoman territory were generally exempted from Ottoman taxa-
tion, a privilege that was sometimes passed on to elements of the Otto-
man religious minority with which the european power associ ated.^23
This economic inequality— effectively favoring non- Muslims over
Muslims— bred resentment and, along with other factors, intercommu-
nal tensions. as historian Ussama Makdisi puts it, “just as the Ottomans
were moving away from a vaguely defined millet system, in which the
Sunni Muslims were treated as socially and culturally superior to other
communities of the empire, and were moving toward a more integra-
tive form of government, the europeans favored and intervened on be-
half of the christians.”^24 When violence ultimately arose between local
Christians and Muslims, as it did, for instance, in Mount Lebanon in the
mid- nineteenth century, europeans interpreted the events as “sectar-
ian” conflict and evidence of the need further to intervene and protect
the empire’s christians. As Makdisi argues, “the beginning of sectari-
anism did not imply a reversion.” Rather, “it marked a rupture, a birth
of a new culture that singled out religious affiliation as the defining
public and political characteristic of a modern subject and citizen.”^25
The net effect of the Tanzimat period on the empire’s focus on re-
ligion and religious difference is thus ambiguous: in certain respects
the tanzimat diminished this focus while in other regards the reforms
and the response to them actually heightened it.^26 this ambiguity is
well illustrated in the issue of Ottoman military conscription for non-
Muslims. Among the Tanzimat reforms, for the first time non- Muslims
technically became subject to the Ottoman military draft. Including
Christians and Jews in the army was meant to remove an important
(^23) the term Capitulations refers to a set of agreements between the Ottoman empire
and various european powers, beginning as early as the sixteenth century, with Selim
II’s agreement with France in 1569. The agreements would permit the foreign subjects
to travel in the Ottoman empire under the rule of their home country’s laws, exempting
them from Ottoman “legal and fiscal jurisdiction.” Initially temporary measures, by the
eighteenth century new agreements came to be regarded as permanent. a non- Muslim
Ottoman subject was able to receive from a european representative a certificate, known
in Ottoman as a berat (title of privilege), which would grant the person the equivalent
status of a european subject, thereby also exempting the person from Ottoman taxes. See
Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700– 1922 , 79.
(^24) Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism, 11.
(^25) Ibid., 174.
(^26) On “the complex and contradictory nature of the Tanzimat” with regard to their
impact on non- Muslims in the empire, see Nadolski, “Ottoman and Secular civil Law,”
521– 25. James Gelvin has noted the irony that a “policy of promising equality to all in-
habitants of the empire regardless of religious affiliation hardened communal boundaries
and precipitated instances of intercommunal violence.” Gelvin, “Secularism and Religion
in the Arab Middle east,” 121.