Talk:Ottoman Old Regime

Note about the period

This article needs a major construction. Because the period is not the Stagnation of the empire. This period roughly corresponds to Decline of the empire. The stagnation begins by the beginning of the 17th century . (Sokollu Mehmet Pasha's death in 1579 or the Peace of Zsitvatorok in 1606) and ends by the end of the 17th century (the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699). Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 10:41, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

This article is pointless if it doesn't somehow deal with the reasons for the stagnation (or decline) and for the fate of the various reforms attemptedGiordaano (talk) 17:13, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I added cites and some explanations. Rjensen (talk) 00:52, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Serious Problems

This article is seriously problematic. First of all, the opening begins by describing events which occurred before the period which the article purports to be about. But the main issue is that it's based almost entirely upon outdated and non-academic sources, which it proceeds to present as if they were up to date and representative of the current historiographical consensus. It's full of ridiculously inaccurate old stereotypes about "Ottoman Decline" which were disproven by actual historians of the Ottoman Empire long, long ago. This entire article needs to be rewritten. I'll do it myself - just leaving this comment here so people know why. This page (as well as many others) should also be retitled. Historians of the Ottoman Empire believe that the Ottoman Decline Thesis is a myth. There was no "stagnation" or "decline" of the Ottoman Empire. Here's one of countless possible citations:

"Ottomanist historians have produced several works in the last decades, revising the traditional understanding of this period from various angles, some of which were not even considered as topics of historical inquiry in the mid-twentieth century. Thanks to these works, the conventional narrative of Ottoman history – that in the late sixteenth century the Ottoman Empire entered a prolonged period of decline marked by steadily increasing military decay and institutional corruption – has been discarded."

Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 9. Chamboz (talk) 02:18, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Starting by removing the section on "Character of the Period" since it's nothing but old and long-ago disproven tropes about decline - totally inaccurate and worthless. Chamboz (talk) 21:42, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand, you seem present a legitimate alternative perspective but instead of adding it to the existing article you just replace it by your preferred version. This seems pretty close to openly pushing historical revisionism.

I am by no means an expert on the topic, and I am prepared to defer to your informed opinion. Sometimes "revisionism" is necessary, i.e. when actual errors in previous accounts are discovered, but you and I know that most "revisionism" isn't inspired by actual errors but rather by shifts in ideology and academic fashion. And especially in this field you will need to understand that your apodictic approach is suggestive of an agenda that is simply informed by Turkish nationalism, using euphemisms like "transformation" instead of "stagnation" for purely cosmetic reasons. You will need extremely overwhelming evidence before you can present mainstream historiographical views with more than a century's history as having been "discarded" or become "obsolete" ten years ago. --dab (𒁳) 09:22, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Well first of all, this is a trend which began not in Turkish historiography, but in American historiography. Remember that Turkish nationalists legitimize the creation of the Republic by arguing that the Ottomans were stagnant and in decline, and thus in need of replacement. This historiographical change is linked to the same wave of self-reflection which occurred along with Edward Said's publication of his book Orientalism in 1978, although not every aspect of it is related to that. You've seen the page on the Ottoman Decline Thesis, did you not view the numerous quotes cited there?

I agree with the above. It's important not to confuse contemporary historiographical fads with established historiographical consensus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by O.M. Nash (talk • contribs) 16:24, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

• Hathaway, Jane (2008). The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1800. Pearson Education Ltd. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-0-582-41899-8. One of the most momentous changes to have occurred in Ottoman studies since the publication of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent [1966] is the deconstruction of the so-called 'Ottoman decline thesis' – that is, the notion that toward the end of the sixteenth century, following the reign of Sultan Suleyman I (1520–66), the empire entered a lengthy decline from which it never truly recovered, despite heroic attempts at westernizing reforms in the nineteenth century. Over the last twenty years or so, as Chapter 4 will point out, historians of the Ottoman Empire have rejected the narrative of decline in favor of one of crisis and adaptation
• Kunt, Metin (1995). "Introduction to Part I". In Kunt, Metin; Christine Woodhead (eds.). Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World. London and New York: Longman. pp. 37–38. students of Ottoman history have learned better than to discuss a "decline" which supposedly began during the reigns of Süleyman's "ineffectual" successors and then continued for centuries.
• Tezcan, Baki (2010). The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern Period. Cambridge University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-107-41144-9. Ottomanist historians have produced several works in the last decades, revising the traditional understanding of this period from various angles, some of which were not even considered as topics of historical inquiry in the mid-twentieth century. Thanks to these works, the conventional narrative of Ottoman history – that in the late sixteenth century the Ottoman Empire entered a prolonged period of decline marked by steadily increasing military decay and institutional corruption – has been discarded.
• Woodhead, Christine (2011). "Introduction". In Christine Woodhead (ed.). The Ottoman World. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-415-44492-7. Ottomanist historians have largely jettisoned the notion of a post-1600 'decline'

If you want to read a short article which addresses some of the changes in the field relating to the Decline Thesis, you can read the following article, which shouldn't be hard to find online: Donald Quataert, "Ottoman History Writing and Changing Attitudes towards the Notion of 'Decline,'" History Compass 1 (2003). The Decline Thesis has been extremely thoroughly debunked by academic historians, and the list of works and historians who have written against its many facets is absolutely enormous. Chamboz (talk) 13:56, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Title

Under WP:UNC, how common is the term "Old Regime" in this context?

Google books gives me 27 hits for "Ottoman old regime" (or "Ottoman old-regime"), mostly not capitalized and primarily always used adjectivally, as in "The Ottoman old regime governance". The phrase is apparently coined in the 1990s and becomes more common in more recent publications (after 2007 or so). This raises a red flag for the complete rewrite imposed on this topic. At the same time, I get 46 hits for the (somewhat awkward) phrase "Ottoman stagnation" (and some 15,000 when just looking for "Ottoman" and "stagnation" being used in the same paragraph).

I do not know what the best title for this page should be, maybe just a decriptive "Ottoman history in the 18th century" or something if we want to keep ideological battles out of article titling, but removing all mention of the term "stagnation" from a page that has been about the stagnation of the Ottoman Empire since 2007 doesn't seem like a very constructive approach to Wikipedia. --dab (𒁳) 09:39, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

The name Old Regime is not universally used by Ottomanist historians, in fact there is no universally used name for the period, hence the problem. It could be beneficial for me to add a section on the various names ascribed to the period. I also at first wanted to give the article a simple chronological name, but the issue is that it's part of a series in which each page has a name depicting the period's 'character', and simply naming it "Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century" would break with the format. So I picked one out of many possible choices. "Stagnation" is not acceptable because it's part of the "Rise and Fall" narrative of the Decline Thesis which historians have left behind. Chamboz (talk) 14:01, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

So yeah, just to make it clear - I would be perfectly fine with naming it "Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century". I just assumed the other editors would want a descriptive name rather than a chronological one in order for it to fit. Chamboz (talk) 14:48, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Removal of image

The Nuruosmaniye Mosque in Istanbul, constructed between 1749 and 1755. This image was removed from the article on 1st May 2022.

Hi @Iskandar323: I saw that an image was removed, so I searched for when that happened and found this edit you made. I see you don't mention removing the image in the edit summary. Was it accidental?

Yaris678 (talk)