401 Alejandra Álvarez Suárez The collapse of order... When taking that into account no inconvenient will be exposed when showing respect to both juridical and religious autonomy for subjects of all faiths, as a matter of fact the religious coexistence was generally pacific somehow due to a practical sense inherited by the ottoman governors with the exception of certain concrete periods included in the 18th century.9 Nevertheless this system was little by little deteriorating due to two main reasons: the western meddling, the internal collapse that can be attributed to the widespread corruption amongst the ruling class of such a vast empire as it was the Ottoman Empire. Another element could also be the decentralizing tendencies and the endemic economic crisis due to an inappropriate use of land.10 The juridical protection system deterioration (imtiyâzât in ottoman turkish) which was conceived as an extraterritoriality and which was firstly designed for western residents that inhabited within the Empire was the first step to the social and religious order crisis inside the Arabic provinces. This protection system was allowing foreigners to be ruled by their own laws, own their own courts and enjoy economic exemptions which started to distort from the first third of the 18th century. Western powers launched with a clear political objective the right to protect non-Muslim minorities and conquering thus the same privileges for ottoman subjects and achieving the governor’s acquiescence.11 After a short period of time the Muslim majority noticed that non-Muslim who had traditionally enjoyed less prerogatives were conversely enjoying important advantages that they actually weren´t, therefore benefiting disproportionally from this protection.12 Several attempts appeared in order to correct abuses of this nature. The Turkish youth decided to end unilaterally this system in 1914,13 but after the Big War 9 Cf. Bernard Heyberger, Les chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la catholique réforme (Syrie, Liban, Palestine XVI -XVII s.), Rome: École Française 1994, 51; Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity. Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century, New York: Columbia Univ. Press 1989, 41. 10 Cf. Ignacio Gutierrez de Terán, State and Confession in the Middle East: the case of Syria and Lebanon. Religion, Taifa and representativeness, Madrid: Cant Arabia Autonomous University of Madrid 2003; Kemal H. Karpat, social Studieson Ottoman and political story: selected articles and essays, Leiden: Brill, 2002, 329-344. 11 Cf. Timur Kuran, “The Economic Ascent of the Middle East’s Religious Minorities: The Role of Islamic Legal Pluralism”, Journal of Legal Studies 33/2 (2004), 501-502.; Bruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arabic Word: The Roots of Sectarianism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001, 79. 12 Cf. FatmaMügeGöçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire. Ottoman Westernization and Social Change, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press 1996, 34, 96-97.V For a more detailed description of the protection system cf. Alejandra Alvarez Suárez, Non-Muslim communities in a Muslim environment. The survival of the Ottoman model in today’s Syria, Madrid: Cantabria 2012, 85-99. 13 Cf. Edward A. Van Dyck, Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire. Report of Edward A. Van Dyck, http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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