LOcATING THe ZIONIST-ARAB eNcOUNTeR • 21reasons, the Tanzimat are often regarded as a major effort to secularize
the empire by undermining certain legal distinctions based on religion.
Though the Tanzimat exemplified “a general inclination toward a
more secular conception of the state,” according to historian Hanioğlu,
this inclination was realized only partially. among the notable ex-
ceptions to the secularist reorientation, the sharīʿa (Islamic religious)
courts were maintained; indeed, they outlasted the empire itself.^19 this
meant that people distinguished themselves, and were distinguished by
others, according to their religions when they were engaged in certain
legal matters.^20 Moreover, in the late nineteenth century those groups
that wished to gain a greater degree of autonomy within the Ottoman
system, on Ottoman terms, did so on the basis of religion. In 1870,
for instance, the Bulgarians appealed to the Ottoman authorities for
recognition not as ethnic Bulgars, explains Hanioğlu, “but as a distinct
religious community in the traditional mode,” headed by an ethnarch
in Istanbul.^21 religious categories thus remained central to the way the
empire related to its subjects even in the tanzimat era.
In fact, in certain respects, religion became even more central to
the empire’s relationship with its diverse populations, and these pop-
ulations’ relationships with one another, beginning in the nineteenth
century. It was during this period that the various european states,
increasingly eager to seize parts of what they believed to be a crum-
bling empire (or at least to keep their european rivals from doing so),
began more aggressively to claim to represent particular non- Muslim
elements among the population of the Ottoman lands. the French
claimed the right to protect the empire’s catholics; the Russians to
protect the Greek Orthodox; the British to protect (at various times)
russian Jews, Druze, and Copts.^22 Outside governments, that is, estab-
lished their influence in the Ottoman empire through their focus on
or exploitation of religious difference, notwithstanding any Ottoman
imperial desires to minimize the importance of such difference since
the age of the tanzimat.
at times, non-Muslims were not only protected but also granted cer-
tain economic advantages owing to their association with europeans.
By the terms of the so- called Capitulations, a set of ad hoc agreements
(^19) Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 74.
(^20) There were also “secular” courts, which were formally recognized in 1847. As
Glidewell Nadolski explains, “these were independent of the Shariʿa and christian courts
in that they dealt with international commercial relations, an area that had traditionally
been outside the jurisdiction of the Shariʿa.” Nadolski, “Ottoman and Secular civil Law,”
522– 23. See also “Ḳanūn,” in eI^3.
(^21) Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700– 1922 , 75– 76.
(^22) Kushner, To Be Governor of Jerusalem, 35– 36.