Trousers in Tunisia

Abstract

Tunisia is fortunate in the American scholarship which it has attracted. For instance, its early nineteenth century, the first period of transition and of failure to make a transition, can be followed and understood very well thanks to this excellent book, and it will be complemented by an admirable forthcoming volume which ought to be its companion, Dr. Arnold Green's study of the Tunisian Ulama between 187 3 and 191 5. Muslim traditional political culture seems to come in two different editions: there is what I believe to be the standard or normal version, which might be called the Ibn Khaldun type, and there is the Ottoman variant. The former is marked bv the pervasiveness of tribal organisation (i.e. kin-defined local order-maintaining and defensive groups trespassing on the violence-monopoly of the state), and the corresponding weakness of the central state, which is itself based on a privileged tribe or group of tribes. The Ottoman type on the other hand is one in which a higher proportion of the countryside is effectively controlled by the centre, and in which the central state by-passes the weakness noted by Ibn Khaldun, inherent in the tribal recruitment of the political elite, by using some alternative method or combination of methods mamluks, devshirme, phanariots, or what have you. Carl Brown sums up the sound anti-lbn-Khaldun principle of Ottoman politics: