Tanzimat

The Tanzimat ("Reorganisation") was the great reform era of the Ottoman Empire, running from the Edict of Gülhane in 1839 to the first Ottoman constitution in 1876. Under Sultans Abdulmejid I and Abdulaziz, reforming ministers such as Mustafa Reşid Pasha, Âli Pasha and Fuad Pasha remodelled the army, law, taxation, education and provincial government, and promised equality to all subjects regardless of religion. The reforms modernised the state but also brought heavy debt, Balkan unrest and a conservative backlash.

By the early 19th century the empire was losing ground. It had suffered defeats in wars with Russia and in the Greek War of Independence, and faced powerful provincial rulers such as Muhammad Ali of Egypt. Selim III's "New Order" reforms ended in revolt, but his successor Mahmud II destroyed the Janissary corps in 1826 and began a programme of centralisation and Western-style reform. In 1838 the Treaty of Balta Liman with Britain abolished Ottoman trade monopolies and opened markets to European goods.

Mahmud II died on 1 July 1839 and was succeeded by his son Abdulmejid. On 3 November 1839 the new sultan issued the Edict of Gülhane, which embodied the ideas of reformers such as Mustafa Reşid Pasha, who had served as ambassador in London and Paris. It guaranteed the life, honour and property of every subject, promised fair taxation and an orderly system of conscription, called for public trials, and abolished tax farming in favour of salaried collectors. Historians disagree on whether it drew on European ideals such as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man or on older Ottoman traditions of good government.

Over the following decades ministries of trade, education, health and the interior were created, along with paper money, a postal service, the empire's first census (1844), identity papers, and new provincial councils. A commercial code with mixed courts arrived in 1850, telegraph lines from 1847 and railways from 1856. The Istanbul slave market was closed in 1847. Mustafa Reşid served several times as grand vizier, and after his death in 1858 Âli and Fuad Pasha dominated government until their deaths in 1871 and 1869.

At the end of the Crimean War the Imperial Reform Edict of 1856 promised full legal equality for non-Muslims and abolished the jizya, though an exemption tax on military service replaced it. A Land Code and a French-inspired Penal Code followed in 1858, the Vilayet Law reorganised the provinces in 1864, secular Nizamiye courts were set up the same year, and an 1869 nationality law created a single Ottoman citizenship. At the same time religious communities received their own charters, including the Armenian National Constitution of 1863. The Mecelle, a civil code based on Hanafi Islamic law, was issued from 1869 to 1876 as a concession to religious conservatives.

Foreign borrowing, which began with the Crimean War, grew until the state went bankrupt in 1875; in 1881 European creditors took control of key revenues through the Ottoman Public Debt Administration. Balkan Christians, seeking autonomy rather than equality, rose in Herzegovina in 1875, while many Muslims resented reforms seen as foreign. In 1876 ministers led by Midhat Pasha deposed Abdulaziz and introduced a constitution and parliament, accepted by the new sultan Abdul Hamid II, who soon turned against it.

The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Congress of Berlin that followed cost the empire much of its Balkan territory. Historians still debate the Tanzimat: some credit it with creating a strong central state and an educated elite, others argue it deepened ethnic divisions and hastened the empire's break-up. Reform continued under Abdul Hamid and the Young Turks.

Our 1815 and 1878 maps show the Ottoman Empire before the reforms and at their end. See also the history of Istanbul.