Abdurrahman Atçıl. Scholars and Sultans in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire.

Abstract

Scholars and Sultans in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire by Abdurrahman Atçıl is a welcome addition to English monographs on the Ottoman learned class. Ottoman ruler Mehmed II (r. 1444–1446, 1451–1481) introduced a number of reforms leading to the Ottoman polity’s centralization. As a part of these efforts, he hierarchically organized the scholars who worked in positions from judge to fiscal administrator. Atçıl analyzes this restructuring process, unprecedented among the peers of the Ottomans. As a result of this policy, “scholar-bureaucrats” (as Atçıl calls them, to differentiate this group from the scholars who did not occupy positions in institutions under the central authorities’ control) emerged “as a professional class” (5–6), gradually gained a degree of control over who would be a member of their class, and “began to see their relationship with the government as valuable instead of as compromising” (5). Along with Mehmed II’s revolutionary role, Atçıl also underlines that the emphasis of Süleyman I’s reign (r. 1520–1566) on bureaucratization, accompanied by a substantial increase in learning institutions and hence positions for scholar-bureaucrats, enhanced this hierarchical structure, especially from the 1530s onward, leading to the rise of distinct career tracks for scholar-bureaucrats. According to Atçıl, this system was consolidated by the 1600s, where this book concludes.