A Moveable Empire by Kasaba Resat;

Author:Kasaba, Resat;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press

While the notable Muslim families were deciding how to position themselves vis-à-vis the central government, the non-Muslim communities, too, discovered that they had some room to maneuver in the face of the government’s growing interest in reform and reorganization. It seems that decisions about which direction to move in and what alliances to build were made not on the basis of ethnic or religious identity but according to specific conditions. This was true for both the various communities within the empire and for the Ottoman government. For example, when a serious rebellion broke out in the predominantly Armenian town of Zeytun in the early 1860s, half the police force that was sent to establish control consisted of Armenians.62 Elsewhere among Armenians, serious concern existed that reform and centralization could undermine the power of local notables. Nevertheless, the promise of better administration was sufficient to lure most of the local Armenian notables to the side of the Ottomans. Three Armenian notables from Haçin received medals, and a fourth, an award of 5,000 pisatres, for the support they rallied in 1864 when the Ottomans staged a campaign against the tribal chiefs of the Kozanoğlu alliance.63 When the spiritual head of the Armenian Orthodox Church, Kiragos, died two years later, he was buried with full military ceremony and honors, mainly because of the services he had rendered to the central government.64

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