INDUS TRY, CONSTITUTIONS, AND NAT! ON ALI S M 287
- guarantees that the "honor, life, and property" of all Ottoman
subjects were inviolable and would be secured, regardless of race
or religion.
On paper these reforms may look good, especially that one about guar-
anteeing the life and safety of all citizens, regardless of ethnic origin: who
could be against ending discrimination? It's practically European.
But put yourself in the shoes of an average Turkish Muslim citizen of
the empire in the nineteenth century: the inherent merits of such reforms
would be hard to separate from the fact that they were dictated to Ot-
toman officials by Europeans-literally, according to historian James L.
Gelvin: apparently the Imperial Edict was written out verbatim by British
ambassador Stratford Canning and handed to Ottoman officials with in-
structions to translate it and proclaim it publicly.^6 Noble Edict of the Rose
Chamber indeed! To many Ottoman Muslims, these smelled less like re-
forms and more like fresh evidence of alien power over their lives.
Not all Ottoman Muslims felt this way. A growing movement of reformists
in Asia Minor, a Turkish version of movements in India, Afghanistan, and
Iran, embraced and promoted the Tanzimat. They thought the only way to
defeat European imperialism was to beat the Europeans at their own game,
which would necessitate, first of all, adopting whatever European ideas ac-
counted for European strength.
But the ulama were still around. The Tanzimat worked directly
against their interests. Taking education out of clerical hands ... replacing
Shari'ah courts with secular courts ... substituting French laws for Islamic
law-such reforms not only stripped the ulama of power but robbed them
of a reason to exist. Of course they were going to resist; and the ulama still
had a lot of moral authority among the ordinary people. They still wielded
clout at court too.
The sultan and his advisers, therefore, soon found themselves caught
between the clamor of secular modernists and the yammer of an Islamic
old guard. Tugged and yanked from both sides, the court tilted now this
way, now that. As the secular modernists argued ever more stridently for
European-style reforms, the traditionalists dug in ever more stubbornly to
reactionary dicta. When the modernists called for mechanized state-run