on the social structure of ottoman empire

Ottoman social typology and interpratations within the framework of Marksist theory

a) feodal mode of production theory

b) asiatic mode of production theory

• Appropriation of surplus product of peasant by military-political class
• Charactrasized as " Ottoman feodalism"
• Turkmen tribes (ghazi frontier begs, high dignitaries of early Ottoman aristocrats), military leaders, initiated the conquests as the formation's dynamics
• Communal ownership like Germanic tribes
• As a result of this act; emergence of the socio- econmomic order of the manor (feudal mode of production)
• Advanced feudalism before Ottoman conquests ( local feudal lords' own control over agriculture and peasant in weaking the cenralized state system.
• Feudal lords who appropriated the rent by right of conquest or by state assignment
• Belief on that "becoming primitive agriculture and regressive" in Ottoman system, the socia-economic retrogression under ottoman centralist power

-far from being characterized Ottoman social formation and its integral dynamics

-ability of ottoman to preserve its strict control on land

-not mean the ruler's absolute power( a particular form of social interaction)

prevent the rise of the class of big landowners.(not a serfdom )

-during ottoman expansion there was a tacit agreement btw Ottoman and peasantry against their feudal overlords

Ottoman and regime was able to reproduce itself

-a large part of the surplus was directed to public services in form of the wakfs.

Marksist paradigm in the Balkan historiography

after ottoman invasions

• transforming the native feudal lords into tımar
• under control of powerful state
• decleration all agriculture land to be state property
• depency of all feudateries
• ottoman feudal class: tımar-holders
• feudal lords who appropriated the rent by right of conquest or by state assignment
• primitive agriculture? "the socia-economic retrogression under ottoman centralist power

mutafeieva

• state/ collecting rent as tax
• soldiers/ held tımar
• great feudalism gained control freehold

Inacık's critisices on the topic

" Ottoman blocked this development by replacing communal ownership of land with state ownership."

but in Europe;" Seigneur, unlike the Ottoman timar- holder, exercised direct and absolute control over land and labor."

Thesis of Karl Wittfogel

• direct force, conquest and terror,
• irrigation system needs to powerfull and centralized state
• bureacratic and oriantalist despotism
• certain conditions; climate and geography
• belief system and its exclusive culture complex
• idea of omnipotent state
• all-controlling bureaucratic machine
• state's support to village communities
• their complaints about locak authorits's abuses of imperial laws
• the state's prime concern was to protect the pesantry
• no primitive non agricultura group has playes as imp. role as the pastoralist.
• hydraulic empire: long-lived
• ottoman, founded on the margin of hydraulic civilization, followed the great traditions of Sasania, Seljukid, Iranian and Ilkhanid

Asiatic mode of production

Wakf in Marksist approach

Whats the wakf?

• encourged in classical age
• prosiding basic public works
• mosque complex
• urban water system
• school
• caravansarais
• bazaar-complex

In Markist literature;

• lands which were transformed by these means into freehold private property rapidly acquired the status of wakf land, becoming virtually exempt from state control
• hypothesis that powerful sultans got it back to land again?
• conflict between Sultans and the holders to try to convert lands into their own private property and wakf
• as a family wakf controlled by the founder's descendants ( kind of feudal landed property)
• free from the state control
• wakf descendants: great ottoman feudals
• %10 revenue just can be taken

Inalcık's critices

"Ottoman incorporated into tımar system many of the local feudal lords who had transformed state land into their own private property under previous decentralized states"

Example; "53 of 335 tımars belongs to members of the pre-ottoman military class"

iInalcık:

• "Until 18th century, basic form of agricultural production based on famil-farm(çift-hane) seems to have remained unchanged in villages and better protection against local authorities."
• After Ottoman settled in Balkans, did not bring about structural changes in the organization of production itself

• static agriculture
• isolated and self-sufficent peasant communities
• no engagement in commodity production for the market
• obligatation to surrender a part of their surplus to this dominant class
• anything in return to peasant communities by state
• no social interaction between state and peasant
• absolute hegemony of the state
• nothing more than a form of usurpation in the guise of tax and rent
• non-evolving, stagnant societies without history.

Tımars in Yugoslav historiography

For Divitoglu

• tımariots, access to the land only as state functionaries
• existence of landowners independent of any connection to state could not have been possible under Ottoman state
• appropriation of surplus in the form of tax
• underlines the absolute subordination of the peasantry
• resulting stagnancy of social formation as a conquence of the state's control over land

-allowing to pre-Ottoman nobilty to become part of Ottoman military

-the freehold landed proporties were converted to tımars under universal

patrimonial system

-similar to selfdom status (new social class)

Inalcık:

• AMP cannot be applied to Ottoman Empire
• instutionalist-functionalism
• characterized by an inability to integrate both in structure and in time its various areas of concentration

CONCLUSION

Feudal mode of productions' hypothesis

in ottoman system

• a social order of ruling class
• appropriation of the surplus product by force ( sipahi with timar, men of religions
• social economic relations based on a system of force and legal bonds

"on the social structure of ottoman empire"

by HALIL INALCIK