384 chapter 9
reforms, the abolition of the timar landholding system, and of course the
Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane of 1839 (issued immediately after Mahmud’s death
by Abdülmecid, his successor), which constituted a major ideological breach
with the Sharia precepts on non-Muslim subjects (according equal rights and
demanding equal responsibilities from all subjects). However, this survey will
end in 1826, considering the paramount importance the janissary system had
for both the socio-political organization of Istanbul politics and Ottoman po-
litical thought.11
1 The Precursors of Nizam-i Cedid: İbrahim Müteferrika and the
Dialogue with the West
From the survey in the previous chapter, it may have been clear that Selim III’s
reforms were not an abrupt break with previous policies. Although his choice to
create new troops, rather than reform the old, was applied at an unprecedented
scale, it was an enhancement of previous efforts, such as those carried out by
Bonneval and by Baron de Tott. Nor was this emphasis a breakthrough innova-
tion at the ideological level (although similar attempts by fellow Muslim rulers,
such as Şahin Giray in the Crimea in the late 1770s and Tipu Sultan in Mysore
a decade later, had met with a rather unfavorable response from Istanbul):12 as
will be seen, the idea of importing military techniques from Europe had ap-
peared more than half a century before Selim’s ascent to the throne. And it was
the creator of the first Ottoman Turkish printing press, İbrahim Müteferrika,
who was practically the first to make this suggestion (and certainly the first to
make it in an influential way).
Of Hungarian origin, Müteferrika (whose Christian name we ignore) was
born in Koloszvár, Transylvania (in 1674 or before), and had a religious educa-
tion in either a Calvinist or a Unitarian (as argued by Niyazi Berkes) college
in his home city. During the Imre Tököly rebellion (1692–93) he was made a
prisoner of the Ottomans and under obscure circumstances converted to Islam
(Müteferrika himself writes that his conversion was a voluntary move in his
Transylvanian years).13 He obtained a solid training in Muslim theology and
11 For a more general view of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century see Salzmann
2012.
12 Şakul 2014a. Cf. the unfavorable reception of Peter the Great’s reforms by the historian
Raşid upon the former’s death: “he had tried to impose crazy new fashions on his people”
(Ortaylı 1994b, 221).
13 For recent recapitulations of the relevant discussion see Sabev 2014, 102–108 and Erginbaş
2014, 61–66; on his role in transcultural exchange, see Barbarics-Hermanik 2013. On the