‘The Great Game of Improvement’: Reşid Paşa and Reform

Abstract

Early in the morning on Sunday, 3 November 1839, a living tableau of the Ottoman imperial elite assembled outside the Topkapı Palace in the rose bower (gülhane) of a large wooded park. An outdoor auditorium had been erected with a raised dais facing a semi-circular enclosure of pavilions and tents that protected the audience from the elements. Seated on the second story of the imperial kiosk was the new sultan, Abdülmecid I, who despite his youth looked distinguished and solemn in a dress uniform, black cloak, and red fez with tall, diamond- encrusted aigrette.² The first floor of the kiosk was reserved for the representatives of the European diplomatic corps at Istanbul. In the place of honour among them sat the third son of King Louis- Philippe I of France, the Prince de Joinville, who happened to be visiting Istanbul. From the window of Joinville’s section of the kiosk, he looked out upon:

a broad space, surrounded by beautiful umbrella pines and sloping gently down to the sea. Beyond is the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus and the pretty village of Kadi- Keuy. This space is full of troops, twelve splendid battalions of the Imperial Guard, Lancers and Artillery. These form a circle, in the centre of which rises a pulpit covered with some yellow stuff, and around it the pashas and the whole body of Ulemas and Mollahs, …³

In a state of society where the religious principle not only influences but absorbs all others, every political or social revolution must in its origin assume a religious form. It is impossible to introduce changes into manners, institutions, government, without at the same time extending them to religion. Turkey could alone be saved by a different direction of those same influences which threatened her fall.¹

— J.H.A. Ubicini, Letters on Turkey 1856