428 chapter 9
the religious or legal connotations that once dominated them.96 On the other
hand, Hakan Erdem has argued convincingly that the texts and declarations of
the Greek Revolution (or Greek War of Independence), on which the French
ideas were undoubtedly a major influence, played a crucial role in shaping
Ottoman political ideology during the Tanzimat era.97 Ataullah Şanizade
Efendi, who was studied in chapter 8, offers a useful insight into this inter-
play between Islamicate tradition, European influences, and the shock of the
national dissident movements, which arguably contributed towards shaping
Tanzimat thought.
4 The Tanzimat as Epilogue
As stated at the beginning of this chapter, this detailed survey ends with the
destruction of the janissaries, arguably the beginning (together with the 1829
clothing laws) of modernity in the Ottoman Empire. Without the janissaries,
the main obstacle to the process of modernizing centralization was removed.
In the second part of his reign (i.e. after 1826), Mahmud II embarked on a pro-
gram of reforms far more radical than any applied by his predecessors: aided
by his enhanced legitimacy as a desacralized absolute monarch, one who was
now visible to the people and who had no need for intermediaries,98 he ef-
fectively reformed the governmental administration towards a more modern
system of subordinated ministries, introduced a council with jurisdiction in
matters not covered by the Sharia (1838), popularized education and tried to
give it a distinctively secular form (apart from primary education and espe-
cially in its higher echelons), founded a state newspaper, Takvîm-i Vekayi (1831),
and initiated a modernized system of population registers focusing on persons
rather than households or production (from 1829 on), among many others.99
Yet for a time political thought continued along the same lines as it had fol-
lowed throughout the latter part of the eighteenth century.100 In some ways,
the early Tanzimat was a Selimian-style, Westernizing reform with “tradition-
96 Lewis 1953; 1985; 1988, 38–42, 109–111; Heinzelmann 2002; Erdem 2005, 78–81. For the de-
velopment of such terms in the Tanzimat period see Doganalp-Votzi – Römer 2008.
97 Erdem 2005, esp. 78ff.
98 Berkes 1964, 94; on the change in Mahmud’s public image policies after 1826, as a token of
modernity, cf. Stephanov 2014.
99 See Berkes 1964, 97–135; Ortaylı 1995, 37–41 and 77–85; Collective work 1990; Hanioğlu
2008, 60–64.
100 On political thought in the early period of Mahmud’s reign see Heyd 1961, 64–65, 74–77;
Beydilli 1999b, 57–63; Kapıcı 2013.