Ottomans: Religiously Authoritarian???
The Middle East and North Africa presents a puzzle. Despite flourishing Islamic civilisations, the region not only fell behind economically but also became distinctively authoritarian and religious.
Political scientists Faisal Ahmed and Ahmet Kuru suggest that sultan historically consolidated power by empowering the ulama (religious scholars), who in turn preached obedience to authority. Together, this could explain why territories captured by Muslim armies are still much more authoritarian and religious.
Previously, I believed that narrative. But emerging evidence reveals striking paradoxes. While Ottoman religious scholars enjoyed unprecedented state integration - with sultanic mosques controlling prestigious colleges and state-appointed professors - religious practices remained remarkably diverse. The sultan was supreme yet struggled to extract taxes from a population far larger than European states. The empire built innovative institutions yet persistently failed to control its territory. Rather than a strong state imposing religious orthodoxy, we find an empire caught between institutional constraints and environmental challenges - where formal centralisation masked profound weakness.
Quick Intro to the Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, ruling from the 14th to 20th centuries, centralised control through innovative institutions. Their Janissary infantry, composed of converted Balkan captives, depended entirely on the ruler. Selected recruits became administrators, yet were deliberately hobbled - relocated every three years to prevent them building local support. The Timariot cavalry, holding inherited fiefs, collected taxes and joined military campaigns. Armies were thus kept on side by taxes and promises of future plunder.
Unlike Western Europe, the Ottoman sultan was both economically and politically independent of the nobility. As emphasised by Jared Rubin, there was no equivalent of a organised parliament.
Ottoman religious scholars were unprecedented in state integration. Istanbul's major sultanic mosques controlled prestigious colleges, with state-appointed professors - mirroring the Byzantine church’s relationship with its emperor.
Evidence of State Weakness
Karaman and Pamuk's analysis of fiscal records (1523-1914) reveals that the Ottomans were en par with European states in the 16th century (a period of military expansion), but then fell behind. They suffered from persistent weakness.
The numbers are particularly striking given population differences. Even though the Ottoman Empire's population was about four times that of England and over ten times that of the Dutch Republic by the 1650s, they collected less tax revenue than either state.
The Ottomans were thus falling behind in per capita terms - by 1780s Ottoman per capita revenues were far below England, Dutch Republic, France and most other European states.
The numbers are particularly revealing when measured against daily wages. Ottoman per capita tax revenues rarely exceeded 2-3 days of an unskilled worker's wages, while European states were collecting many times this amount by the 18th century.
Local notables (ayan) gained such autonomy that they could ‘simply ignore the sultan while maintaining control over their locality’. Some stopped sending revenues altogether, passing tax farms to their heirs instead of returning them to the state.
The central treasury's share plummeted from 46% in 1527 to just 25% by 1661. Multiple reform attempts failed to reverse this loss.
The Ottoman Empire struggled to achieve Fiscal Centralisation
Unlike China’s bureaucratic taxation or Russia’s 18th-century centralisation under Peter the Great, the Ottomans struggled.
By the second half of the 18th century, the Ottoman Empire's military and fiscal weakness had become acute. Large parts of the empire were depopulated by famine, flight, and violence. The capital regularly ran short of basic supplies.
While European states were able to manage large fiscal shocks through improved borrowing and avoiding debasements, the Ottomans resorted to frequent debasements and extraordinary taxes that further undermined economic stability.
Despite significant Ottoman fiscal reforms and revenue increases, the empire remained weaker than European powers until WWI.
No Bourgeoisie
In “Rulers, Religion, and Riches”, Jared Rubin compares the political economy of Protestant Europe and the Ottoman Empire. In the former, merchants could threaten revolt or withhold vital tax revenue. This created pressure to modernise institutions and commercial law. By contrast, Ottoman traders and manufacturers never gained enough economic clout to demand concessions.
Empowering economic elites would mean undermining the religious scholars who legitimised Ottoman rule - and for what? The notables could already extract local taxes while keeping potential revolt in check. Since sultans could maintain coercive control and religious legitimacy, they had little incentive to empower merchants or reform commercial regulations.
This created perverse incentives. Tax farming proved more lucrative than investing in trade or industry. Property rights remained insecure - sultans regularly confiscated successful enterprises. Even when more commercial activity might have generated higher future revenues, tax farmers had no assurance against arbitrary seizure. The upshot? Policies consistently favoured state and notable interests over the economic elite, stunting private capital accumulation for much of the empire’s 600-year existence.
This institutional story is compelling - and consistent with this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics. But there’s another crucial factor amplifying these weaknesses: geography.
‘Bad Geography’?
The capacity to generate and extract revenue may have been further constrained by the environment.
Unlike China's vast agrarian plains, the Ottoman Empire governed a patchwork of marginal agricultural lands interspersed with pastoral regions. Across the wider Middle East and North Africa, 90% proved unsuitable for either forest or rain-fed agriculture. The marginal soils of Syria, Tunisia, Iran and Anatolia meant a mere 20% drop in rainfall could spell disaster.
J.R. McNeil details that in the 1520s, a quarter of the inhabitants of Anatolia, and as much as 60% of those living in Ottoman Arab provinces, were nomads or semi-nomads. This limited agricultural surplus constrained tax revenue potential, whilst vast distances complicated collection.
Climate Crises and Rebellion!
These geographic constraints became particularly apparent during environmental stress. The The Little Ice Age in the late 16th century triggered the massive Celali Rebellion as drought and famine led to widespread social upheaval. While this revolt was defeated, depopulation persisted. Ottoman tax records suggest that half of the provinces in Anatolia saw their numbers decline. Pastoralists were also struggling, and in the early 1600s they invaded farmlands en masse. The imperial government were unable to quell this encroachment.
From the 1690s, the Ottomans sought to settle nomads and encourage farming, in order to raise taxes and increase conscription. Yet for two centuries, many pastoral tribes successful resisted.
Low taxation inhibited coercive control. As Michael Cook documents in “A History of the Muslim World”, the empire struggled even to secure loans to pay troops. Unpaid soldiers would raid neighbouring peasantry or refuse to fight.
Nomad Attacks
Turkic archers on horse-back were formidable foes, raiding farming villages, slaughtering and pillaging, while their own women, children, and herds remained safe. Much like sea pirates, they could hit and run, escape to the hinterland.
Chinese and Indian farmers were also attacked by nomads, but only at edges of their vast agrarian economies. In East Asia, from the Qin Unification (221 BCE), large agrarian empires emerged in response to raids by pastoralist confederacies - argues McNeil, citing Peter Turchin. Globally, big agrarian empires tended to emerge where arable and grasslands met. MENA was different, it comprised a vast patchwork of interwoven pastoralists and herders. This meant heightened vulnerabilities.
MENA’s settlements constantly suffered nomad attacks, yet lacked the agrarian surplus to build up defences. So instead of a singular “Great Wall of China”, the Middle East and North Africa have an abundance of Walled Cities - like Fes and Rabat.
Religious Heterodoxy!
Insecurity, insurgencies and fiscal weakness shatter the myth of centralised religious control. Finally, we can unravel the Ottoman paradox. On paper, religious scholars enjoyed unprecedented state integration - Istanbul's sultanic mosques controlled prestigious colleges and state-appointed professors. Yet in practice, this formal centralisation masked profound weakness. Geography fragmented control, notables maintained local autonomy, and the state struggled to extract resources or maintain consistent oversight.
These constraints had profound cultural implications. Without the administrative capacity to monitor far-flung regions or the resources to maintain a comprehensive bureaucracy, religious practice remained stubbornly local and diverse. The sultan might appoint religious scholars, but he couldn’t ensure their authority reached beyond urban centres into the empire’s pastoral hinterlands.
And that’s precisely consistent with Michael Cook’s evidence of religious syncretism and heterodoxy...
Consider the Bektashi Sufis, closely linked to the empire’s elite Janissary corps. They openly practiced rituals involving wine, bread and cheese that looked remarkably like Christian communion. Even the Sultan himself wasn’t above such heterodoxy - the 17th-century traveller Evliya Çelebi observed him drinking wine and reflected tolerantly on differing customs.
This syncretism wasn’t limited to elites. Along the Austrian-Ottoman frontier, Muslims and Christians developed mutual aid networks, pledging to help captured captured co-religionists. When Catholic missionaries reached a Kosovan village in 1637, they encountered a startling welcome: “Come in, Fathers; in our house we have Catholicism, Islam and Orthodoxy”. In medieval Anatolia, Muslims would even have their children baptised.
This religious fluidity persisted well into the modern era. Lady Montagu’s 18th-century letters reveal Turkish cultural elites as skeptical of Muhammad's infallibility as they were of the Pope’s. Even during the empire's final decades, such practices continued - in 1908, Muslims in Ürgüp sought Christian assistance during a cholera epidemic, asking them to parade their saint’s body and sharing sanctuaries.
None of this is to deny religious persecution, massacres, or expulsions (of Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and Alevis). However, Cook's numerous examples of religious syncretism suggest some heterodoxy.
Ottomans: Religiously Authoritarian???
The evidence – from weak taxation to syncretic rituals – upends narratives of ‘religious authoritarianism’.
The Ottoman empire was politically centralised in that no single group could effectively challenge the sultan's authority. Yet this masked profound weakness. A challenging landscape of farmers and nomads constrained tax revenues. Without resources to maintain a comprehensive bureaucracy, the state struggled to project power beyond urban centres.
This created an unexpected pattern. Unable to gain legitimacy through performance, and lacking a commercial class strong enough to demand reform, the empire relied on religious authorities. Clerics provided the sultan legitimacy while delivering local club goods. But their formal integration into state institutions did not entail religious homogeneity. Instead, practice remained stubbornly local and diverse - from wine-drinking Sufis to shared Christian-Muslim sanctuaries.
The pattern became self-reinforcing. Acquiescence to the ulama enabled them to thrive, while geographic and fiscal constraints prevented any actor from imposing cultural uniformity. State weakness enabled diversity.
The final paradox is this. While religion is sometimes mislabelled 'tradition', uniformity is in many ways deeply modern. Only with 20th century advances in technology - mass education, social media, YouTube - could religious entrepreneurs finally achieve what the Ottomans never could: propagate a singular definition of 'piety'.
