Ottoman decline thesis

The Ottoman decline thesis or Ottoman decline paradigm (Turkish: Osmanlı Gerileme Tezi) is an obsolete 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. 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 remained 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 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 In some cases this is due to the continued reliance by non-specialists on outdated and debunked works, and in others to certain political interests benefiting from the continued perpetuation of the decline narrative.

The first attributions of decline to the Ottoman state came from Ottoman intellectuals 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.

One of the first references of Ottoman decline in Western historiography can be found in Incrementa atque decrementa aulae othomanicae completed in 1717 by Dimitrie Cantemir and translated in English in 1734. He was followed in the nineteenth century, among others, by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, who knew Ottoman Turkish and adopted the idea directly from Ottoman nasihatname writers. Internal decline was thus thought of as an appropriate means of explaining the Ottomans' external military defeats, and acted also as a justification for European imperialism. The notion of a declining Ottoman/Islamic civilization was thus used as a foil for Western Civilization, in which the "decadent" Ottomans were contrasted with the "dynamic" West. Islam (as an all-encompassing civilizational category) often came to be portrayed as the polar opposite of the West, whereby Western societies valued freedom, rationality, and progress while Islam valued servility, superstition, and stagnation. Such depictions were perpetuated in the mid-twentieth century above all by the works of H.A.R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, and Bernard Lewis, who adhered to a civilizational conception of Islamic decline while modifying it with the new sociological paradigm of Modernization Theory. These views came under increasing criticism as historians began to reexamine their own fundamental assumptions about Ottoman and Islamic history, particularly after the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978.

The most prominent writer on Ottoman decline was the historian Bernard Lewis, who argued that the Ottoman Empire experienced all-encompassing decline affecting government, society and civilization. He laid out his views in the 1958 article, "Some Reflections on the Decline of the Ottoman Empire", which developed into the mainstream opinion of Orientalist scholars of the mid-twentieth century. However, the article is now highly criticized and no longer considered accurate by modern historians. Lewis' views were as follows:

The first ten sultans of the Ottoman Empire (from Osman I to Suleiman the Magnificent) were of excellent personal quality, while those who came after Suleiman were without exception "incompetents, degenerates, and misfits," a result of the Kafes system of succession, whereby dynastic princes no longer gained experience in provincial government before coming to the throne. Faulty leadership at the top led to decay in all branches of government: the bureaucracy ceased to function effectively, and the quality of their records worsened. The Ottoman military lost its strength and began to experience defeats on the battlefield. They ceased to keep up with the advances of European military science, and consequently suffered territorial losses. As the Ottoman state and society was geared towards constant expansion, their sudden failure to achieve new conquests left the empire unable to adapt to its new relationship with Europe.