Ottoman Decline Thesis

The Ottoman Decline Thesis or Ottoman Decline Paradigm (Turkish: Osmanlı Gerileme Tezi) refers to a now-obsolete historical narrative which had once been used to explain the history of the Ottoman Empire. According to the Decline Thesis, following a golden age associated with the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566), the empire gradually entered into a period of all-encompassing stagnation and decline from which it was never able to recover, lasting until the empire's dissolution in 1923. This thesis was used throughout most of the twentieth century as the basis of both Western and Republican Turkish understanding of Ottoman history. However, by 1978, historians had begun to reexamine the fundamental assumptions of the Decline Thesis. After the publication of numerous new studies throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and the reexamination of Ottoman history through the use of previously untapped sources and methodologies, academic historians of the Ottoman Empire achieved a consensus that the entire notion of Ottoman decline was a myth – that in fact, the Ottoman Empire did not stagnate or decline at all, but rather continued to be a vigorous and dynamic state long after the death of Suleiman the Magnificent. The Decline Thesis has been criticized as "teleological," "regressive," "Orientalist," "simplistic," and "one-dimensional," and described as "a concept which has no place in historical analysis." Scholars have thus "learned better than to discuss [it]."

Despite this dramatic paradigm shift among professional historians, the Decline Thesis continues to maintain a dominating presence in popular history, as well as academic history written by scholars who are not specialists on the Ottoman Empire.

The idea of decline first emerged among the Ottomans themselves. Beginning much earlier, but greatly expanding during the seventeenth century, was the literary genre of nasihatname, or "Advice for Kings." This genre had a long history, appearing in earlier Muslim empires such as those of the Seljuks and Abbasids. Nasihatname literature was primarily concerned with order and disorder in state and society; it conceptualized the ruler as the embodiment of justice, whose duty it was to ensure that his subjects would receive that justice. This was often expressed through the concept of the Circle of Justice (Ottoman Turkish: dāʾire-i ʿadlīye‎). In this conception, the provision of justice by the ruler to his subjects would allow those subjects to prosper, strengthening the ruler in turn. Should this break down, society would cease to properly function. Thus many Ottomans writing in this genre, such as Mustafa Âlî, described the reign of Suleiman I as the most perfect manifestation of this system of justice, and put forth the idea that the empire had since declined from that golden standard. These writers viewed the changes which the empire had undergone as an inherently negative corruption of an idealized Suleimanic past. However, it is now recognized that rather than simply describing objective reality, they were often utilizing the genre of decline to voice their own personal complaints. For instance, Mustafa Âli's belief that the empire was declining was in large part motivated by frustration at his own failure to achieve promotions and court patronage. The primary goal of the nasihatname writers, then, may have simply been to protect their own personal or class status in a rapidly changing world.

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