66 Islam and Modernity
were over these issues, grouped under the demand for a constitution, in both the
Ottoman Empire and Iran, limiting the power of the king by law. While most
of the reforming Ottoman monarchs of the nineteenth century initiated or sup-
ported the reforms, they eventually baulked at the idea of a constitution and par-
liament limiting their powers. Sultan Abdulhamid II (1842–1918) ultimately used
Islam as a weapon to abort the constitution and parliament in the latter decades
of the nineteenth century, and his ultimate defeat and deposition by the Young
Turks was in the name of the constitution. In the processes of political struggles
over these issues Islam was ideologised in modern ways (Deringil 1998).
Winners and losers
These processes of modernity led to disparities in advantage and loss to differ-
ent sectors of the population. Local trades and crafts were hit by cheap imports
widely distributed through new forms of transportation such as the railways
(Quataert 2000: 110–39). Some agricultural sectors benefi ted from cash crop
distribution and export, such as cotton in Egypt, but at the same time these led
to heightened exploitation and oppression of the peasants. New classes devel-
oped: a modern working class in the railways and harbours, for instance, as
well as the expanded urban services and administration (on which more below).
Government bureaucracy, as well as new sectors in education and the profes-
sions, formed new middle classes with distinct world views (Berkes [1964] 1998:
277–8; Mardin 1989: 136–8). It was the religious classes who, for the most part,
lost out. Their core functions of law and education were being bureaucratised as
state functions, performed by personnel trained in modern educational institu-
tions. Some religious fi gures, mainly from the elites, went along with the reforms
and adapted to them, such as Jawdat Pasha (Cevdet Pas ̧a), the architect of the
Majalla (Mecelle), the codifi ed ‘civil-law’ element of the sharia, and the various
Egyptian and Syrian modernist ulama who were fascinated by the new world
(Hourani 1983: 161–92, 271–3; Berkes [1964] 1998: 169–72). Other sectors
of the ulama, including the lower orders, opposed or attacked the reforms and
the processes of modernity in the name of religion and tradition. The weakness
of the Empire vis-à-vis the European powers, they argued, was because of the
departure from the path commanded by God in his sharia, and the imitation of
the hostile infi dels. Their advocacy found a ready response among the poorer
classes who had lost out, as well as among some of the old elites of military ranks
and landed classes who were disadvantaged by the new changes. These were
conservative or reactionary responses. Another response with religious tinges
was that of modernist thinkers and reformers, who did not oppose modernity as
such, but the autocratic manner in which it was carried out, and the continu-
ing absolutism of power. These included the group in mid-century known as
the Young Ottomans; intellectuals, poets, journalists and functionaries, widely