Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720–1829

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Abstract
In 1826, Sultan Mahmud II orchestrated the slaughter of 6,000–7,000 janissaries and, in order to incinerate any janissary remnants that had taken refuge there, burned the Belgrade Forest outside Istanbul. During his reign (1808–39), the sultan attacked many of the other bases of the ancien régime, such as the timar system, the lifetime tax farms, and the political autonomy of provincial notables. He also centralized the pious foundations, brought them under a special ministry, and expropriated their revenues. Such stories of Sultan Mahmud's dramatic and violent policies, as well as their 18th-century origins and their 19th-century legacies, are familiar ones in Ottoman and Middle Eastern history. It is a commonplace that Sultan Mahmud aimed to dismantle the power of the military and religious classes in favor of a new bureaucracy of administrators and scribes. And it is also known that his efforts had a major impact on the subsequent evolution of the Tanzimat reform programs during the later 19th century.

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