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In theOttoman Empire, amillet (Turkish:[millet];Ottoman Turkish:ملت,Arabic:مِلَّة) was an independentcourt of law pertaining to "personal law" under which aconfessional community (a group abiding by the laws of Muslimsharia, Christiancanon law, or Jewishhalakha) was allowed to rule itself under its own laws.
Despite frequently being referred to as a "system", before the nineteenth century the organization of what are now retrospectively called millets in the Ottoman Empire was not at all systematic. Rather, non-Muslims were simply given a significant degree of autonomy within their own community, without an overarching structure for themillet as a whole. The notion of distinctmillets corresponding to different religious communities within the empire would not emerge until the eighteenth century.[1] Subsequently, themillet system was justified through numerous foundation myths linking it back to the time of SultanMehmed the Conqueror (r. 1451–81),[2] although it is now understood that no such system existed in the fifteenth century.[3] Heads of millets, ormilletbaşı (Ethnarch), usually had absolute secular and ecclesiastical power over their communities, being answerable only to the Sultan.
During the 19th centuryrise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, as a result of theTanzimat reforms (1839–76), the term was used for legally protectedethno-linguisticminority groups, similar to the way other countries use the wordnation. During this era, the status of these groups, their relation to the central government, and their self-governance, were codified intoconstitutions, elevating the power of the laity at the expense of clergy. The wordmillet comes from theArabic wordmillah (ملة) and literally means "nation".[3]Abdulaziz Sachedina regards the millet system as an example of pre-modernreligious pluralism, as the state recognized multiple different religious groups in exchange for some control over religious identification and the enforcement of orthodoxy.[4] Notably, Ethnarchs principally conversed with theForeign Ministry, as if they represented foreign nations, but after 1878 it was through theJustice Ministry.[5]
Historian Johann Strauss wrote that the term "seems to be so essential for the understanding of theOttoman system and especially the status of non-Muslims".[6] Other authors interpret themillet system as one form ofnon-territorial autonomy and consider it as such a potentially universal solution to the modern issues of ethnic and religious diversity.[7] According toTaner Akçam, the Ottoman state was "... based on the principle of heterogeneity and difference rather than homogeneity and sameness, [which] functioned in an opposite way to modern nation-states."[8]
The termmillet, which originates from theArabicmilla, had three basic meanings in Ottoman Turkish: religion, religious community and nation.[9] The first sense derives fromQuranic usage and is attested in Ottoman administrative documents into the 19th century.[9]Benjamin Braude has argued that before the Tanzimat reforms, the wordmillet in the sense of religious community denoted the Muslim religious community or the Christians outside of the Ottoman Empire.[9] This view is supported byDonald Quataert.[10] In contrast,Michael Ursinus writes that the word was used to refer to non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire even before that time.[9] The term was used inconsistently prior to the 19th century.[9]
The systematic use ofmillet as designation for non-Muslim Ottoman communities dates from the reign of SultanMahmud II (r. 1808–1839) in the early 19th century, when official documentation came to reiterate that non-Muslim subjects were organized into three officially sanctionedmillets:Greek Orthodox,Armenian, andJewish.[11] The bureaucrats of this era asserted that the millet system was a tradition dating back to the reign of SultanMehmed I (r. 1413–1421).[11] Many historians have accepted this claim and assumed that amillet system of this form existed since early Ottoman times.[11] Recent scholarship has cast doubt on this idea, showing that it was rather a later political innovation, which was introduced in the rhetorical garb of an ancient tradition.[11] The Ottoman state used religion rather than ethnicity to define eachmillet, and people who study the Ottoman Empire do not define the Muslims as being in amillet.[12]
The Ottoman Turkish version of theOttoman Constitution of 1876 uses the word "millet", as do the Arabic and Persian versions; despite this, at the time the usage of the Arabic word "milla" was declining in favour of the word "ummah".[6]
The Armenian, Greek, and Jewish residents did not use the word "millet" and instead described themselves as "nations" (French:nation, Armenian: ազգ (azg), Greek: Έθνος (ethnos), and Ladino:nasyon).[13] The lack of use of the word "millet" among the Christian and Jewish minorities reflected in versions of the Ottoman Constitution in their respective languages: The French version of the Ottoman Constitution used the word "communauté" in the place of "millet", and so the others used words modeled after or based on the French: հասարակութիւն (hasarakut'iwn) in Armenian, общност/община (obstina) in Bulgarian, κοινότης (koinotēs) in Greek, andkomunita in Judaeo-Spanish.[6]
The millet system is closely linked toIslamic rules on the treatment of non−Muslim minorities living under Islamic dominion (dhimmi). The Ottoman term specifically refers to the separate legal courts pertaining to personal law under which minorities were allowed to rule themselves (in cases not involving any Muslim) with fairly little interference from theOttoman government.[14][15]
People were bound to theirmillets by their religious affiliations (or theirconfessional communities), rather than their ethnic origins, according to themillet concept (excepting the Armenian case, until the modern era).[16] Themillets had a great deal of power – they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. All that was required was loyalty to the Empire. When a member of onemillet committed a crime against a member of another, the law of the injured party applied, but the ruling Islamic majority being paramount, any dispute involving a Muslim fell under theirsharia-based law.
Later, the perception of themillet concept was altered in the 19th century by the rise of nationalism within the Ottoman Empire.
Although the Ottoman administration of non-Muslim subjects was not uniform until the 19th century and varied according to region and group, it is possible to identify some common patterns for earlier epochs.[citation needed] Christian and Jewish communities were granted a large degree of autonomy. Tax collection, education, legal and religious affairs of these communities were administered by their own leaders. This enabled the Ottomans to rule over diverse peoples with "a minimum of resistance". The Jewish community, in particular, prospered under Ottoman rule, and its ranks were swelled with the arrival of Jews who were expelled from Spain. At the same time, non-Muslims were subject to several forms of discrimination and excluded from the Ottoman ruling elite.[17] Armenians formed threemillets under the Ottoman rule.[18][verification needed] A wide array of other groups such asCatholics,Karaites, andSamaritans was also represented.
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The large number ofCircassians in the Ottoman Empire was mainly due to theCrimean War. During the war and following years, many Circassians fled the conquest of their homeland byRussia.[19] Circassians in the Ottoman Empire, despite being Muslim, mainly kept to themselves and maintained their separate identity, even having their own courts, in which they would tolerate no outside influence.[20]
TheOrthodox Christians were included in theRum Millet (millet-iRûm) or the "Roman nation", and enjoyed a certain autonomy.[21] It was named afterRoman ("Byzantine") subjects of the Ottoman Empire, but OrthodoxGreeks,Bulgarians,Albanians,Georgians,Antiochians,Aromanians,Megleno-Romanians,Romanians, andSerbs were all considered part of the samemillet despite their differences in ethnicity and language and despite the fact that the religious hierarchy was dominated by the Greeks.[21] Nevertheless, ethnonyms never disappeared and some form of ethnic identity was preserved as evident from a Sultan'sFirman from 1680, that lists the ethnic groups in theBalkans as follows: Greeks (Rum), Albanians (Arnaut), Serbs (Sirf), "Vlachs" (Eflak, referring to the Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians), and Bulgarians (Bulgar).[22]
TheEcumenical Patriarch was recognized as the highest religious and political leader (millet-bashi, orethnarch) of all Eastern Orthodox subjects of the Sultan, though in certain periods some major powers, such as Russia (under the 1774Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca), or Britain claimed the rights of protection over the Ottoman Empire's Orthodox subjects. TheSerbian Patriarchate of Peć and theArchbishopric of Ohrid, autonomous Orthodox Churches under the tutelage of the Ecumenical Patriarch, were taken over by the GreekPhanariots during the 18th century, in 1766 and 1767 respectively.
By the 19th century the Orthodox Christian millet was dominated by Greeks, which were worried of Bulgarian and Romanian autocephalism. Over the course of 1860–1862, a series of laws were produced by a constitutional committee which, taken together, make up theBasic Laws of the Greek Orthodox Millet.[23]
Until the 19th century, there was a single Armenianmillet (millet-i Ermeniyân) which served all ethnic Armenians irrespective of whether they belonged to theArmenian Apostolic Church,[24] theArmenian Catholic Church,[25] or theArmenian Protestant Church (which was formed in the 19th century).[26] Besides a religious role, thismillet also played a political and cultural role. Namely, it bundled together all Armenian and some other groups, showcasing a shift from religious identity towards national identity.[25] As a result of this, a type of hegemony emerged in which all groups that were under thismillet had to conform to the norms imposed by the leader of themillet, who was appointed by the Sultan.[25] This had a cultural, political, linguistic, and religious effect on all of these groups. Only later did separate Catholicmillets emerge. Non-Armenians from churches which were theologically linked to the Armenian Church (by virtue of beingnon-Chalcedonians) were under the authority of the Armenian Patriarchate, although they maintained a separate hierarchy with their own Patriarchs; these groups included theSyriac Orthodox and theCopts.[27][24]
Armenian Catholics and Armenian Protestants in 1850 (with British backing) separated from the Armenian Gregorian Millet to become their own millets. After the 1856 Imperial Reform edict, the Armenian Protestant Millet was the first millet to havea constitution sanctioned by the government, which was based on the principle of representative and lay control. Debate for a constitution among the Gregorian Armenians would be influenced by the Protestant Armenians'.[28] The Armenian Gregorian Millet receiveda constitution on March 29, 1863, after several years of tensions within the Armenian community between Loussavorial and Khavarials and with thePorte.[29]
Assyrians are referred to as 'Asuri' in the Turkish vernacular. Assyrians split by Christian sect were thus treated as separate ethnic groups for the Ottoman government. TheChurch of the East largely identifies as Assyrian, but the liturgical language is called Syriac, hence multiple 'millets' for Syriac speaking Assyrians arose as a consequence of the separation by Church affiliation, as was required by 19th century Ottoman law.[30]
TheSyriac Catholic community was recognized as its ownmillet in 1829.[30]n and theChaldean Catholic community was recognized as its ownmillet in 1844.[31] The Syriac Orthodox community in the Ottoman Empire was for long not recognized as its ownmillet, but part of theArmenianmillet under the Armenian Patriarch. This meant that the Syriac Orthodox were subject to the hegemony of the Armenians linguistically, culturally, politically, and religiously.[25] During theTanzimat reforms (1839–78), the Syriac Orthodox were granted independent status with the recognition of their ownmillet in 1873.[30]
Under themillet system the Jews were organized as a community on the basis of religion, alongside the other millets (e.g.Eastern Orthodox millet,Armenian millet, etc.). They were the most geographically spread group within the empire.[32] Ottoman Jews enjoyed privileges similar to Christians in the Ottoman Empire.[33] In the framework of themillet they had a considerable amount of administrative autonomy and were represented by theHakham Bashi (Turkish:Hahambaşı حاخامباشی), who held broad powers to enact, judge, and enforce the laws among the Jews in the Ottoman Empire and often sat on the Sultan'sdivan.[34] The Jewish millet received aconstitution in 1865.[35]
The Jews, like the othermillet communities of the Ottoman Empire, were still considered "People of the book" and protected by the Sharia Law of Islam.[36] However, while the Jews were not viewed in the eyes of the law as equals of Muslims, they were still treated relatively well at points during the Ottoman Empire. Norman Stillman explains that the prosperity of medieval Jews was closely tied to that of their Muslim governors. Stillman notes that during the time between the 9th and 13th centuries when Jewish culture blossomed, "medieval Islamic civilization was at its apogee".[37] Given their rampant persecution in medieval Europe, many Jews looked favorably uponmillet. In the late 19th century such groups as the Bilu, a group of young Russian Jews who were pioneers in the Zionist movement, proposed negotiating with the Sultan to allow amillet like settlement which would allow them greater independence in Palestine.[38]
After theFall of Constantinople, the onlyLatin Catholic group in the Sultan's domain were theGenoese who lived in the Byzantine capital.[39] Over the next decades, Turkish armies pushed into the Balkans, overrunning theCatholic populations of bothAlbania,Bosnia,Croatia,Hungary andMontenegro.
TheMelkite Catholics gained their autonomy as a religious community in 1848 bySultan Abdulmecid.[40] Bruce Masters claims that Melkite Catholics insisted that they had amillet of their own, that would grant them "sense of distinctiveness".[41]
In the Orient, the 16th century saw theMaronites of Lebanon, the Latins of Palestine, and most of the Greek islands, which once held Latin Catholic communities, come under Turkish rule.[citation needed] Papal response to the loss of these communities was initially a call to the crusade, but the response from the European Catholic monarchs was weak: French interest, moreover, lay in an alliance with the Turks against theHabsburgs.[citation needed] Furthermore, the Catholics of the Ottoman world received a protector at the Porte in the person of the French ambassador. In this way the Roman Catholicmillet was established at the start of theTanzimat reforms.[42]
TheMaronite Patriarch historically avoided the firman and millet system until patriarchElias Peter Hoayek was forced to accept the firman in 1916, whenMount Lebanon fell under direct Ottoman authority, as protection from local leaders.[43]
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In a 1910 bookWilliam Ainger Wigram used the termmelet in application to the PersianSasanian Empire, arguing that the situation there was similar to the Ottomanmillet system and no other term was readily available to describe it.[44] Some other authors have also adopted this usage.[45] The early Christians there formed theChurch of the East (later known as theNestorian Church after theNestorian schism). The Church of the East's leader, theCatholicos orPatriarch of the East, was responsible to the Persian king for the Christians within the Empire. This system of maintaining the Christians as a protected religious community continued after the Islamic conquest of the Sassanids, and the community of Nestorian Christians flourished and was able to send missionaries far past the Empire's borders, reaching as far as China andIndia.
In 1839 and 1856, reforms were attempted with the goal of creating equality between the religious communities of the Ottoman Empire. In the course of these reforms, newmillets emerged, notably for Eastern Catholic and Protestant Christian communities. The heads of eachmillet and clerics in them were also to have their internal rule reviewed by the central government and to keep their power in check.[46] Many clerics in themillet system pushed back against these reforms as they believed it was meant to weaken themillets and the power these clerics had built for themselves. Thesemillets, refusing to give up any autonomy, slowed down the attempted reforms and their impact on the equality of religious communities.[47]
Before the turn of the 19th century, themillets had a great deal of power – they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. TheTanzimat reforms aimed to encourageOttomanism among the subject nations and stop the rise of secessionist nationalist movements. within the Ottoman Empire. The reforms tried to integrate non-Muslims and non-Turks more thoroughly into the Ottoman society with new laws and regulations, but failed.
In 1856, during the Tanzimat era, SultanAbdulmejid I enacted theHatt-ı Hümayun (modern TurkishIslahat Fermânı; "Firman of the Reforms"), which proclaimed freedom of religion and civil equality of all religious communities. It further granted the authorities in eachmillet greater privileges and self-governing powers, but also required oaths of allegiance to the Sultan.
In March 1863, the Sultan enacted the "Regulation of the Armenian Nation" (Turkish:Nizâmnâme−i Millet−i Ermeniyân): a constitution for theArmenian Orthodox Gregorian nation (millet) of that time. This document was drawn up by Armenian intelligentsia, which sought to curb the powers of the Armenian Patriarch and nobility. It created an Armenian National Assembly.[48]
These two reforms, which were theoretically perfect examples of social change by law, caused serious stress on the Ottoman political and administrative structure.
The Ottoman System lost important domestic powers under theCapitulations of the Ottoman Empire. Many foreigners resident in the Empire were not subject to its laws, but rather those of their homelands. In addition, European powers becameformal Protectors of certain groups in the empire: Russia ofEastern Orthodox groups, France of Roman Catholics, and Great Britain of Jews and other groups.
Russia and Britain competed for the Armenians; the Eastern Orthodox perceived American Protestants, who had over 100missionaries established in Anatolia byWorld War I, as weakening their own teaching.
These religious activities, subsidized by the governments of western nations, were not devoid of political goals, such in the case ofcandlestick wars of 1847, which eventually led in 1854[49] to theCrimean War.[50] Tension began among the Catholic and Orthodox monks in Palestine with France channeling resources to increase its influence in the region from 1840. Repairs to shrines were important for the sects as they were linked to the possession of keys to the shrines. Notes were given by the protectorates, including the French, to the Ottoman capital about the governor; he was condemned as he had to defend theChurch of the Holy Sepulchre by placing soldiers inside the temple because of the "candlestick wars", eliminating the change of keys.[50] Successive Ottoman governments had issued edicts granting primacy of access to different Christian groups which vied for control of Jerusalem's holy sites.[51]
Under the original design, the multi-faced structure of themillet system was unified under theHouse of Osman. The rise of nationalism in Europe under the influence of theFrench Revolution had extended to the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. Each millet became increasingly independent with the establishment of its own schools, churches, hospitals and other facilities. These activities effectively moved the Christian population outside the framework of the Ottoman political system.
The Ottomanmillet system (citizenship) began to degrade with increasing identification of religious creed with ethnic nationality. The interaction of ideas of French revolution with themillet system created a strain of thought (a new form of personal identification) which made nationality synonymous with religion under the Ottoman flag. It was impossible to hold the system or preventClash of Civilizations when theArmenian national liberation movement expressed itself within the Armenian church.PatriarchNerses Varjabedyan expressed his position on Ottoman Armenians to theBritish Foreign Secretary,Lord Salisbury on 13 April 1878.[52]
It is no longer possible for the Armenians and the Turks to live together. Only a Christian administration can provide the equality, justice and the freedom of conscience. A Christian administration should replace the Muslim administration. Armenia (Eastern Anatolia) and Kilikya, are the regions where the Christian administration should be founded... The Turkish Armenians want this... That is, a Christian administration is demanded in Turkish Armenia, as in Lebanon.[52]
Today a version of religion-based legal pluralism resembling the millet system still persists in varying forms in some post-Ottoman countries likeIraq,Syria,Jordan,Lebanon,Israel, thePalestinian Authority,Egypt, andGreece (for religious minorities), which observe the principle of separate personal courts and/or laws for every recognized religious community and reserved seats in the parliament. Some legal systems which developed outside the Ottoman Empire, such as those inIndia,Iran,Pakistan, andBangladesh, display similar characteristics.
In Egypt for instance, the application offamily law – including marriage, divorce,alimony, child custody, inheritance, and burial – is based on an individual's religious beliefs. In the practice of family law, the State recognizes only the three "heavenly religions": Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Muslim families are subject to thePersonal Status Law, which draws onSharia. Christian families are subject tocanon law, and Jewish families are subject toJewish law. In cases of family law disputes involving a marriage between a Christian woman and a Muslim man, the courts apply the Personal Status Law.[53]
Israel, too, keeps a system based on the Ottomanmillet, in which personal status is based on a person's belonging to a religious community. The state of Israel – on the basis of laws inherited from Ottoman times and retained both under British rule and by independent Israel – reserves the right to recognise some communities but not others. Thus,Orthodox Judaism is officially recognised in Israel, whileReform Rabbis andConservative Rabbis are not recognised and cannot perform marriages. Israel recognised theDruze andBaháʼí as separate communities, which the Ottomans and British had not – due mainly to political considerations. Also, the state of Israel reserves the right to determine to which community a person belongs, and officially register him or her accordingly – even when the person concerned objects to being part of a religious community (e.g., staunchatheists of Jewish origin are registered as members of the Jewish religious community, a practice derived ultimately from the fact that themillet ultimately designated a person's ethnicity more than a person's beliefs).
Israeli secularists such asShulamit Aloni andUri Avnery often protested and called for abolition of this Ottoman remnant, and its replacement by a system modeled on that of the United States where religious affiliation is considered a person's private business in which the state should not interfere. However, all such proposals have been defeated.
Greece recognizes only aMuslim minority, and no ethnic or national minorities, such asTurks,Pomaks, orBulgarians. This is the result of several international treaties as theConvention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations of 1923 and of theTreaty of Lausanne of 1924, when the oldmillet categories were used for the exchange between Greece and Turkey of the Greek Orthodox population in Turkey and Moslems in Greece. The categories were also used to establish the protection of the two remaining recognized minorities, the "Muslims of Western Thrace" (Turks, Pomaks, and Roms) and the "Greek Orthodox of Istanbul". In 1924, upon theLeague of Nations' demand, a bilateral Bulgarian-Greek agreement was signed, known as thePolitis–Kalfov Protocol, recognizing the "Greek Slavophones" as Bulgarians and guaranteeing their protection.[54] On 2 February 1925, the Greek parliament, claiming pressure from theKingdom of Yugoslavia, which threatened to renounce theGreek–Serbian Alliance of 1913, refused to ratify the agreement; the refusal lasted until 10 June 1925. Under the 1927Mollov-Kafantaris Agreement, the bulk of the Slavic-speaking population in Greece left for Bulgaria.
Today, the word "millet" means "nation" or "people" in Turkish, e.g.Türk milleti ("Turkish nation"),İngiliz milleti ("English nation"), etc. It also retains its use as a religious and ethnic classification; it can also be used as a slang to classify people belonging to a particular group (not necessarily religious or ethnic), such asdolmuşçu milleti ("taxibus drivers") orkadın milleti ("women folk").
Themillet system in the Muslim world provided the pre-modern paradigm of a religiously pluralistic society by granting each religious community an official status and a substantial measure of self-government.
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