History of the Ottoman Empire |
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Historiography (Ghaza, Decline) |
The Ottoman decline thesis or Ottoman decline paradigm (Turkish: Osmanlı Gerileme Tezi) is an obsolete[1] historical narrative which once played a dominant role in the study of 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 dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.[2] This thesis was used throughout most of the twentieth century as the basis of both Western and Republican Turkish[3] understanding of Ottoman history. However, by 1978, historians had begun to reexamine the fundamental assumptions of the decline thesis.[4]
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 remained a vigorous and dynamic state long after the death of Suleiman the Magnificent.[1] The decline thesis has been criticized as "teleological", "regressive", "orientalist", "simplistic", and "one-dimensional",[5] and described as "a concept which has no place in historical analysis".[6] Scholars have thus "learned better than to discuss [it]."[7]
Despite this dramatic paradigm shift among professional historians, the decline thesis continues to maintain a strong presence in popular history, as well as academic history written by scholars who are not specialists on the Ottoman Empire. In some cases this is due to the continued reliance by non-specialists on outdated and debunked works,[8] and in others to certain political interests benefiting from the continued perpetuation of the decline narrative.[9]
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 favour of one of crisis and adaptation
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.
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.
Ottomanist historians have largely jettisoned the notion of a post-1600 'decline'
In the scholarly literature produced by Ottomanists since the mid-1970s, the hitherto prevailing view of Ottoman decline has been effectively debunked.
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.
In the scholarly literature produced by Ottomanists since the mid-1970s, the hitherto prevailing view of Ottoman decline has been effectively debunked. However, only too often, the results of painstaking research and innovative revisions offered in that literature have not yet percolated down to scholars working outside Ottoman studies. Historians in adjacent fields have tended to rely on earlier classics and later uninformed surveys which perpetuate older, now deconstructed, views.