Everything about Millet Ottoman Empire totally explained
Millet is an
Ottoman Turkish term for a
confessional community in the
Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, with the
Tanzimat reforms, the term started to refer to legally protected religious
minority groups, other than the ruling
Sunni.
Millet comes from the
Arabic word
millah (ملة). The Millet system of Ottoman
Islamic law is considered an early example of pre-modern democratic
religious pluralism.
Concept
The millet concept has a similarity to
autonomous territories that has long been the European norm for dealing with minority groups. The millet system has a long history in the Middle East, and is closely linked to
Islamic rules on the treatment of non−Muslim minorities (
dhimmi). The Ottoman term specifically refers to the separate legal courts pertaining to personal law under which minorities were allowed to rule themselves (in cases not involving any Muslim) with fairly little interference from the
Ottoman government.
People were bound to their millets by their religious affiliations (or their
confessional communities), rather than their ethnic origins, according to the
millet concept. The head of a
millet, most often a religious hierarch such as the Greek Orthodox
Patriarch of Constantinople, reported directly to the
Ottoman Sultan. The millets had a great deal of power — they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. All that was insisted was loyalty to the Empire. When a member of one millet committed a crime against a member of another, the law of the injured party applied, but the ruling Islamic majority being paramount, any dispute involving a Muslim fell under their
sharia−based law.
Later, the perception of the
millet concept was altered in the 19th century by the rise of nationalism within the Ottoman Empire.
Millets (until Reformation Era)
Until the 19th century (Reformation Era) beside the Muslim millet, the main millets were the
Greek Orthodox,
Jewish,
Armenian and
Syrian Orthodox. Armenians formed more than one (actually three)
millets under the Ottoman rule. A wide array of other groups such as
Catholics,
Karaites and
Samaritans were also represented.
Muslims
Muslim communities prospered under the Ottoman Empire, as the Sultan was also the
Caliph. Ottoman law didn't recognize such notions as
ethnicity or
citizenship, thus, a Muslim of any ethnic background enjoyed precisely the same rights and privileges. It was claimed that under such conditions, Muslim Arabs came to view the empire as a revived
Islamic empire. However, even if Caliphate played a significant role, the real existence of these feelings is questionable long before the
Arab Revolt and the subsequent
dissolution of the empire in 20th century. By the 17th century, the
Maghreb regencies were only nominally under the Ottoman control and Egypt was almost independent by the beginning of the 19th century.
Creeds which were seen as deviant forms of the Caliphal dynasty's Sunni Islam, such as
Shi'as,
Alawis,
Alevis and
Yezidis, had no official status and were considered to be part of the Muslim millet—only the
syncretic Druze of the
Djebel Druze and
Mount Lebanon enjoyed feudal−type autonomy. These groups were spread across the empire with significant minorities in most of the major cities. Autonomy for these groups was thus impossible to base on a territorial region.
Christians
Orthodox Christians
Even though it was named after
Greek subjects of the Ottoman Empire, all Orthodox Christians were included in the
millet-i Rûm. Therefore, Orthodox Greeks,
Bulgarians,
Arabs,
Albanians,
Vlachs,
Romanians and
Serbs were all considered part of the same
millet despite their differences in ethnicity and language and despite the fact that the religious hierarchy was Greek dominated.
Armenians
Until the nineteenth century, there was a single Armenian
millet which served all ethnic Armenians irrespective of whether they belonged to the
Armenian Apostolic Church, the
Armenian Catholic Church or the
Armenian Protestant Church (which was formed in the 19th century).
Jews
The Ottoman Jews enjoyed similar privileges to those of the Orthodox, and came to enjoy some of the most extensive freedoms in Jewish history. The city of
Thessaloniki, for instance, received a great influx of Jews in the 15th century and soon flourished economically to such an extent that, during the 18th century, it was the largest and possibly the most prosperous Jewish city in the world. By the early 20th century, Ottoman Jews —together with Armenian and Greeks— dominated commerce within the Empire.
History
Establishment
19th Century (Reformation Era)
New millets were created in the 19th century for several
uniate and
protestant Christian communities, then for the separate
Eastern Orthodox Bulgarian Church, recognized as a millet by an Ottoman
firman in
1870 and excommunicated two years later by the
Greek Orthodox Patriarchate as adherents of
phyletism (national or ethnic principle in church organization). In the period before
World War I there were seventeen millets within the Empire.
Reformulation into Ottomanism
Before the turn of the 19th century, the millets had a great deal of power — they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes.
Tanzimat reforms aimed to encourage
Ottomanism among the secessionist subject nations and stop the rise of nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire, but failed to succeed despite trying to integrate non−Muslims and non−Turks more thoroughly into the Ottoman society with new laws and regulations. With the
Tanzimat era the regulation called "Regulation of the Armenian Nation" (Turkish:"Nizâmnâme−i Millet−i Ermeniyân") was introduced on
March 29 1863 over the Millet organization, which granted extensive privileges and autonomy concerning self−governance. The Armenian Nation, "Millet−i Ermeniyân", which is considered here, is the
Armenian Orthodox Gregorian nation (
millet) of that time. In a very short time, Ottoman Empire passed another regulation over "Nizâmnâme−i Millet−i Ermeniyân" developed by the Patriarchate Assemblies of Armenians, which was named as the Islahat Fermâni (Firman of the Reforms). "Firman of the Reforms" gave immense privileges to the Armenians, which formed a "governance in governance" to eliminate the
aristocratic dominance of the Armenian
nobles by development of the political strata in the society. These two reforms, which were theoretically perfect examples of social change by law, brought serious stress over Ottoman political and administrative structure.
Effect of Protectorate of missions
The Ottoman System lost the mechanisms of its existence from the assignment of protection of citizen rights of their subjects to other states. People were not citizens of the Ottoman Empire anymore but of other states, due to the
Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire to European powers, protecting the rights of their citizens within the Empire. The
Russians became
formal Protectors of
Eastern Orthodox groups, the
French of Roman Catholics and the
British of Jews and other groups.
Russia and England competed for the Armenians; the Eastern Orthodox perceived American Protestants, who had over 100
missionaries established in Anatolia by
World War I, as weakening their own teaching.
These religious activities, subsidized by the governments of western nations, were not devoid of political goals, such in the case of
candlestick wars of
1847. Tension began among the Catholic and Orthodox monks in Palestine with France channeling resources to increase its influence in the region from
1840. Repairs to shrines were important for the sects as they were linked to the possession of keys to the temples. Notes were given by the protectorates, including the French, to the Ottoman capital about the governor; he was condemned as he'd to defend the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre by placing soldiers inside the temple because of the candlestick wars, eliminating the change of keys. Successive Ottoman governments had issued edicts granting primacy of access to different Christian groups which vied for control of Jerusalem's holy sites.
Effect of nationalism
Under the original design, the multi faced structure of the millet system was unified under the
house of Osman. The rise of nationalism in Europe under the influence of the
French revolution had extended to the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. Each millet became increasingly independent with the establishment of their own schools, churches, hospitals and other facilities. These activities effectively moved the Christian population outside the framework of the Ottoman political system.
The Ottoman millet system (citizenship) began to degrade with the continuous identification of the religious creed with ethnic nationality. The interaction of ideas of French revolution with the Ottoman Millet system created a breed of thought (a new form of personal identification) which turned the concept of nationalism synonymous with religion under the Ottoman flag. It was impossible to hold the system or prevent
Clash of Civilizations) when the
Armenian national liberation movement expressed itself within the Armenian church.
Patriarch Nerses Varjabedyan expresses his position on Ottoman Armenians to British Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Lord Salisbury on
April 13 1878.
Modern Use
Today the millet system is still used at varying degrees in some post−Ottoman countries like
Iraq,
Jordan,
Lebanon,
Israel, the
Palestinian Authority and
Egypt. It is also in use in states like
Iran,
Pakistan and
Bangladesh which observe the principle of separate personal courts and/or laws for every recognized religious community and reserved seats in the parliament.
In Egypt for instance the application of
family law, including
marriage,
divorce,
alimony, child custody,
inheritance and
burial, is based on an individual's reiligous beliefs. In the practice of family law, the State recognizes only the three "
heavenly religions": Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Muslim families are subject to the Personal Status Law, which draws on
Sharia. Christian families are subject to
canon law, and Jewish families are subject to
Jewish law. In cases of family law disputes involving a marriage between a Christian woman and a Muslim man, the courts apply the Personal Status Law (see:
Egypt — International Religious Freedom Report Released by the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2001
).
Current meaning of the word
Today, the term "millet" means the word "nation" in Turkish. It also retains its use as a religious and ethnic classification; it can also be used as a slang to classify people belonging to a particular group (not necessarily religious or ethnic), such as
dolmuşçu milleti ("those who belong to the commercial minivan drivers group") or
kadın milleti ("all the women").
Further Information
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