Abstract
Reading Ivo Andric's colorful short story, “The Vezir's Elephant,” suggests a weakness in state rule consistent with a Eurocentric image of Ottoman backwardness. In the story, just as Bosnian peasants familiarized themselves with the habits of one Turkish official, he would be removed, transferred to another province and replaced by a new official with new whims and wishes. Throughout the sixteenth and a large part of the seventeenth centuries, a more or less firmly established rotation system was part of the Ottoman state mode of social control. Patrons and clients, and patrons among themselves remained foreign and unfamiliar. The resulting level of uncertainty in the provinces disrupted patron-client ties.
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