Returning the Household to the Patrimonial-Bureaucratic Empire: Gender, Succession, and Ritual in the Mughal, Safavid and Ottoman Empires

Abstract

The patrimonial-bureaucratic empire, a model of premodern state organisation first developed by Max Weber, has inspired much of the recent writing on the structure of the empires of the early modern Middle East. Patrimonial-bureaucratic rulers governed on the basis of a personal kind of traditional authority whose model was the patriarchal family. Patrimonial domination originated in the patriarch’s authority over his household: It entailed obedience to a person, not an office; it depended on the loyalty between subject and master; and was limited only by the ruler’s discretion. Patrimonial states arose, according to Weber, when lords and princes extended their sway over extra household subjects in areas beyond the patriarchal domain. Expansion, however, did not limit the ruler’s ambition. Within the larger realm, conceived as a huge household, the ruler/master exercised military and administrative power of an unrestrained character.¹