Ottoman Old Regime

The Ottoman Empire’s early modern political and social order before the nineteenth-century Tanzimat reforms. It combined dynastic rule with provincial, military, fiscal, and communal institutions that changed over time.

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Ottoman dynasty: The ruling house that governed the Ottoman Empire from its foundation to its abolition in 1922. Dynastic legitimacy placed the sultan at the center of the Old Regime’s political order.
Tax farming: The lease of rights to collect specified taxes in return for payment to a government. It became a major way to turn provincial revenue into state income.
Ottoman Empire: A multiethnic empire centered in Anatolia and southeastern Europe that lasted from the late thirteenth century to 1922. The Old Regime describes an extended phase in the empire’s political development.
Tanzimat: A series of Ottoman reforms from 1839 to 1876 that sought to reorganize administration, law, military affairs, and subjecthood. The Tanzimat is the reform era that conventionally marks the Old Regime’s endpoint.
Devshirme: A levy that recruited Christian boys from Ottoman subjects for conversion, education, and service to the state. It supplied administrators and soldiers to the sultan’s household and military institutions.
Iltizam: An Ottoman tax-farming arrangement in which an individual acquired the right to collect specified revenues, usually for a limited term. This system connected central fiscal needs with local collectors and powerholders.
Conquest of Constantinople: The Ottoman capture of Constantinople from the Byzantine Empire in 1453 under Mehmed II. The conquest established the imperial capital around which later institutions developed.
Ottoman constitutional era: The period of Ottoman constitutional government beginning with the constitution of 1876. Constitutional politics introduced institutions and claims to representation absent from the earlier order.
Janissaries: An elite Ottoman infantry corps that became a powerful political and economic institution. Their military service and urban influence shaped the balance between ruler and military elites.
Malikane: A system of lifetime tax-farm grants introduced in the Ottoman Empire in 1695. Lifetime grants strengthened tax farmers’ stakes in provincial revenues and local influence.