Political life in the provinces
The shifting locus of political power in the center – from the sultans to sultanic households to the households of viziers and pashas to the streets – was paralleled by important transformations in the political life
of the provinces. Overall, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, provincial political power seemed to operate more autonomously of control from the capital.
Nearly everywhere the central state became visibly less important and local notable families more so in the everyday lives of most persons. Whole sections of the empire fell under the political
domination of provincial notable families.
For example, the families of the Karaosmano˘glu, C¸ apano˘glu, and Canıklı Ali Pa¸sao˘glu respectively
dominated the economic and political affairs of the west, central, and northeast Anatolia; in the Balkan lands, Ali Pasha of Janina ruled Epirus, while Osman Pasvano˘glu of Vidin controlled the lower Danube from Belgrade
to the sea.
And, in the Arab provinces, the family of Suleyman the Great ruled Baghdad for the entire eighteenth century (1704–1831) as did the Jalili family in Mosul, while powerful men such as Ali Bey dominated Egypt. These provincial notables can be placed in three groups, each reflecting a different social context. The first group descended from persons who had come to an area as centrally appointed officials and subsequently put
down local roots, a marked violation of central state regulations to the contrary.
Central control, indeed, had never been as extensive as the state’s declarations had suggested. Officials did circulate from appointment to appointment, but the presence of careful land surveys and lists of rotating officials notwithstanding, not as often or regularly as the state would have preferred.
Nonetheless, such appointees to positions of provincial authority, whether governors or timar holders, remained
in office for shorter periods in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and longer periods during the eighteenth century. That is, by comparison with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the circulation of centrally appointed officials in the provinces slowed considerably during the eighteenth century. Through negotiations with the center, these individuals gained the legal right to stay.
Thus, for example, the al Azm family in Damascus and the Jalili family in Mosul had risen in Ottoman service
as governors while, from lower-ranking posts, so had the Karaosmano˘glu dynasty in western Anatolia. In each case, family members remained in formal positions of provincial power for several generations and longer.
The second group consisted of prominent notables whose families had been among the local elites of an area before the Ottoman period.
In some cases, the sultans had recognized their status and power at the moment of incorporation, for example, as they did with many great landholding families in Bosnia. Historians likely have underestimated the retention of
local political power by such pre-Ottoman elite groups, and more of these families played an important role in the subsequent Ottoman centuries than has been credited. In another pattern, existing elite groups who
originally were stripped of power gradually re-acquired political control and recognition by the state.
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