Short Essay

Suffering defeat after defeat at the hands of European powers towards the end of the
eighteenth century, the Ottoman and Middle Eastern governments faced an existential crisis
entering the nineteenth century. In order to combat the European powers the Middle Eastern
governments needed reform. Reform would mean the adoption of many European tactics and
practices which in their secular nature were at odds with the Muslim scholars. While the
European styled reforms caused controversy and opposition with the ulama, it is not as simple to
say that Middle Eastern governments were incapable of reorganizing themselves because of
Islam. Muhammad Ali was able to achieve large successes in reforming and reorganizing
Egypts army to European standards and in the Ottoman Empire it was not Islam that was the
greatest opponent to reform, but the janissaries who saw the reforms as their own existential
crisis.
The Eighteenth century marked a period of political and economic disintegration for the
Ottoman Empire. Christian enemies were taking lands culminating with Napoleon and the
French occupying Egypt in 1798 (Quataert 55). The Ottoman Empire and Middle East
governments needed to respond. Thus beginning with the accent of the Ottoman Sultan Selim III
to the death of the Egyptian governor Muhammad Ali, the Middle East engaged in state
sponsored reforms to make their armed forces in the image of the European powers (Cleveland
56). While the Sultan and Muhammad Ali saw the military problems as technical issues, the
Wahhabis and other religious activists considered the crisis of defeat as a religious and moral
problem (Quataert 50). Thus the Wahhabis challenge of religious legitimacy caused the later
sultans of the Eighteenth century to increasingly articulate their role as the caliph of the Muslim
people (51).

Despite the sultanate continually reaffirming themselves as the caliphate, when Selim III
attempted the first round of reforms he was presented with strong resistance by the Ulama who
saw the reforms, especially military academies as threats to traditional values. In 1806 the ulama
combined forces with rebellious Janissaries and overthrew Selim III (Cleveland 58).
The Janissaries saw the new reforms as a threat to their existence. Selims reforms called
for the establishment of nizam-I jedid (the new order), a military unit comprised of Turkish
peasant youths from Anatolia and numbering around 23,000 troops (Cleveland 57). Selims
request for a new army was in response to the new state of the Janissaries. The once fearsome
Janissaries had by 1700 become militarily ineffectual and were now more mafia-like chieftains
for businesses than an elite military corps (Quataert 44). The Janissaries new objective was their
own survival rather than that of the state and they went from being the terror of foreign foes to
the terror of the sultans (Quataert 45).
Despite the defeat of early Ottoman reforms there was success elsewhere in the Middle
East. After the French occupation of Egypt, local Middle Eastern rulers were impressed by the
technological abilities of the French who could attack from across the Mediterranean to the very
heartland of the Ottoman domains (Cleveland 59). No leader was more impressed than
Muhammad Ali. An ethnic Albanian, he became the governor of Egypt in 1805 four years after
his arrival (Cleveland 60). Like Selim he faced opposition, local war chiefs or Mamluks,
however Muhammad Ali was able to vanquish his opposition and usher in 30 years of reform
(Cleveland 63). Muhammad Ali was so successful in military reform that he began to even
expand across the Middle East first defeating the Wahhabis then pushing all the way to just
outside Istanbul (Cleveland 66). Muhammad Ali and Egypt is proof that Middle Eastern
governments were capable of reform.

Islam in the eighteenth century was an important force in the Middle East government especially
in the Ottoman Empire in which the Sultan used his status as caliphate for claims of legitimacy.
However Islam alone could not prevent Middle Eastern governments from engaging in reform as
seen by the successes of Muhammad Ali in Egypt. Furthermore Selim IIIs attempts at reform
were defeated not only by the ulama but by the uprising of threatened Janissaries.