Imperial Citizen: Marriage and Citizenship in the Ottoman Frontier Provinces of Iraq

6. Conclusion

145 6 Conclusion The prohibition of marriage between Ottoman women and Iranian men, enacted by law in 1874, was employed in this book as a framework and departure point to examine and analyze two larger issues of concern to scholars specializing in the history of the late Ottoman Empire. The first issue is the ways the idea of nationalism and citizenship entered into the empire, the meaning of these ideas in the Ottoman context, and the mechanisms used by officials to promote these concepts to create “national” loyalty to the dynastic state. This issue is particularly relevant for Ottoman historians of intellectual history who have examined the role of Ottomanism (Osmanlılık) in creating an Ottoman national ideal. These scholars have examined the development of Ottoman nationalism as an intellectual endeavor by the ruling elites, which was intended to unify the empire. As important as this scholarship has been for our understanding of the mechanisms used by the intellectual classes in addressing nineteenth-century trends toward nation-state and modernity, there is a void in the scholarship concerning the ways these concepts influenced official policies in the Tanzimat and post-Tanzimat periods. The second major issue for consideration is center-periphery relations as represented by Ottoman official attitudes toward frontier regions. Official attitudes were most clearly reflected by centralization policies, which attempted to bring these territories under tighter control. As mentioned in the beginning of this book, the majority of recent studies on Ottoman frontier policies have focused on military campaigns, and economic, administrative, and educational development that created more efficient forms of bureaucratization and more effective mechanisms to exert tighter controls over these peripheral regions. We have examined the conceptual and institutional processes by which gender and personal status issues 146 | Imperial Citizen related to marriages between Ottoman women and Iranian men became an integral part of this centralizing process in the Iraqi frontier provinces and a way to analyze larger political, social, and cultural issues. As with most historical analysis that relies on archival sources, the documents have been the driving force behind this choice in perspective. The Ottoman determination to uphold this prohibition, which was so clearly and repeatedly delineated in these documents and case studies, leaves no doubt about the importance of the 1874 law to Ottoman centralization policies and control over the Iraqi provinces. • It is useful to again consider Hugh Seton-Watson’s theory of “official nationalism” in order to understand Ottoman official attitudes toward the concept of nationalism. As already noted, official nationalism was common among nineteenth-century dynastic powers, which attempted to create a merger between the nation and the dynastic empire. One of the main goals of the intellectuals who supported “Ottomanism” was to create an “official imperial nationalism” whose primary loyalty was to the royal family and which transcended more local religious and ethnic bonds. Tanzimat-era Ottomanism was perhaps most clearly elucidated by Fuad Paşa, the Ottoman foreign minister who in 1861 reaffirmed the hierarchical nature of the relationship between the dynasty and its subjects . In exchange for their loyalty to the sultan, Ottoman subjects would be treated with equality and equanimity. Nationalism during this period meant loyalty and obedience to the dynasty. At the end of the nineteenth century, Sultan Abdülhamid II sought to reaffirm the legitimacy of the dynasty by overlaying “official imperial nationalism” with an emphasis on Islamic legitimacy in the person of the sultan and his role as caliph. Abdülhamid emphasized the fundamental dogma of the Hanafi School by sending teachers and ulema into the peripheries of the empire to teach the tenets of Sunni Islam and create a loyal population among disparate ethnicities and religious persuasions . His policies of expanding Sunni Islam were particularly evident in the Ottoman eastern provinces, where officials were concerned with the increase in Shi‘ism. The meaning of official imperial nationalism became more fluid in the post-Hamidian period, as evinced in parliamentary Conclusion | 147 discussions. As the empire lost its remaining territories in the Balkans, and entered into World War I, opportunities opened for more variations on the meaning of official imperial nationalism, and more challenges to the concept of Ottomanism as the only possible ideology for unifying the empire. Official nationalism would appear to be nothing more than an intellectual exercise unless it was used in the service of policies that would carry out its goals of unifying an ethnically and...