Abstract
In 1848, Sultan Abdulmecid granted the Melkite official status as an autonomous religious community ( millet ) by adding his seal to an imperial patent ( berat ) naming Maksimus Mazlum of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria and wherever else Melkite Catholics reside in the sultan's protected realms. The patent further stated that although the Chaldean, Syrian, Melkite, and Maronite priests had been under the authority of the Catholic Patriarch of Istanbul, they constituted separate communities and would henceforth be recognized as such. Although the various millets within the Ottoman Empire were officially constituted as religious communities, a particular community's own sense of distinctiveness, and hence the need for recognition, arose more often out of a nascent proto-nationalism than from questions of religious dogma. Their identity as both Arabic-speakers and Syrians was an implicit sub-text of their historical arguments for recognition as a religious community. Keywords:Melkite community; millet; Ottoman empire; Syrians
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