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In 1848, Sultan Abdulmecid granted the Melkite Catholic community official status as an "autonomous religious community" ( millet ) by adding his seal to an imperial patent ( berat ) naming Maksimus Mazlum "Patriarch 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 Catholic 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 Catholic community; millet; Ottoman empire; Syrians

By the first quarter of the 19th century, foreigners and Ottomans alike were keenly aware that the sovereignty of the house of Osman was rapidly eroding. Austrian and Russian armies threatened the empire from without; ethnic revolts and secession beset it from within. Its occasional allies Britain and France ate away at its autonomy through growing economic and political influence. The military threats were apparent, but the Porte was less alert to the dangers its relationships with the Western European powers held for Ottoman hegemony over the peoples of the Balkans and the Arab Middle East.1

Masters Bruce. Power and society in Aleppo in the 18th and 19th centuries. In: Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, n°62, 1991. Alep et la Syrie du Nord, sous la direction de Viviane Fuglestad-Aumeunier . pp. 151-158.

Iranian merchants, artists, and scholars had an almost continuous presence in the Ottoman Empire from its very beginnings in the thirteenth century. After the Arab provinces were added to the empire in the sixteenth century, their numbers were further augmented by pilgrims on their way to the holy cities of the Hijaz and Iraq. As such, in terms of actual numbers, during any period of its history there were probably more Iranians resident in the Ottoman Empire than from any other foreign state. This assertion, however, cannot be proven empirically, for before the nineteenth century the Ottoman sultans did not recognize the Iranians as constituting a “nation” along the model they had established for the European communities resident in the empire.

The events of Aleppo have caused amongst all classes of all nationalities a sensation such as I have never witnessed here before. The population of Aleppo is the wealthiest, best conducted community in Syria. That such a body of people in a time of profound peace, living under the protection of an organized government of two pashas and a garrison of regular troops of all arms should find themselves, without the slightest provocation on their part, or a moment's warning, the victims of atrocities which are rarely practiced on a town taken by storm, is a consideration which has, I regret to say, produced a feeling most unfavorable to the responsible government.

Stretching from Algiers to Basra, Aleppo to San’a, the Arab provinces constituted roughly half of the Ottoman Empire’s territory at its height. Although most of the inhabitants of this expanse shared a common language, they were not heirs to a single political culture. More than language, local political conditions and limits, imposed by geography, on communication and control proved decisive in determining an Arab province’s experience in the Ottoman centuries. We can construct a model, consisting of concentric zones radiating out from Istanbul, to represent the degree of assimilation of the Arab domains into the Ottoman provincial system. The inner zone consisted of provinces in Syria and Iraq which were closest to the Ottoman heartland of Anatolia. These were fully incorporated into the empire, and the full measure of Ottoman provincial governance was implemented there. Provinces further afield were governed by men sent out from Istanbul. But they typically relied on local political elites to fill the lower ranks of administration. The Arab cities on the outer circle of empire rarely had Ottoman governors. In their stead, local warlords ruled, although they also professed fealty to the sultan and collected taxes in his name. Given the diversity in conditions that existed in the Arab provinces, the local forces making for autonomy differed widely in their origins. Nonetheless, every Arab province witnessed the rise of political movements or personalities who challenged the sultan’s monopoly of power in the eighteenth century.

Introduction The conquest of Syria in 922/1516 and of Egypt in 923/1517 by Sultan Selīm I (r. 917–26/1512–20) decisively altered the balance of power in the Middle East. The elimination of the Mamlūk sultanate and the incorporation into the empire of two of Islam’s former imperial capitals, Damascus and Cairo, strengthened the Ottoman dynasty’s position as the champion of Sunnī Islam at a time when their Safavid rivals were establishing Shīʿism as the religion of state in Iran. The sultan’s claim to be the heir apparent of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs was consolidated by the peaceful submission of Medina and Mecca to Selīm, following the fall of Cairo. The Muslim character of the Ottoman state was further enhanced by the demographic reality that Muslims had become the overwhelming majority of the sultan’s subjects for perhaps the first time in the empire’s history. The reduction of Cairo and Damascus to provincial centres administered by a court that was at best forty-five days distant for an imperial messenger diminished their importance on the world stage and no Ottoman sultan after Selīm visited either. Yet Cairo was the political heart of the empire’s richest province and Damascus’ position as the starting point for the annual ḥajj caravan was crucial for the maintenance of the Ottoman sultan’s prestige as is demonstrated by one of his imperial titles, the ‘Servitor of the Two Holy Cities’ ( khādim al-ḥaremeyn ). Those at court in Istanbul could not be totally indifferent, therefore, to either city’s fate.