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The Ottoman Empire and the Mid-East: Prelude to the Modern Mid-East

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By the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was considered the "sick man of Europe" and was greatly reduced in size from its peak; it still, however, stretched from North Africa through the Middle East into Asia Minor and parts of Southern Europe. In reality, the Ottomans were a dynamic community that had much to offer the world in culture and commerce and continued to impact interactions in the region to this day.

The Ottomans divided their empire into provinces or wilaya that were governed from regional capitals that included Baghdad. Local government generally rested on three elements: a governor with the appropriate military rank, a militia and a judicial organization headed by a qadi who was appointed by Istanbul. The Ottomans also allowed local elite groups to continue functioning in roles of power and often adapted to local conditions.

Urban life continued to flourish even though the empire lost prestige against the European powers. Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo grew by almost fifty percent in land size and the population roughly doubled during the Ottoman period. A number of factors were involved in this growth including the tremendous economic potential of an empire stretching over 2.5 million square kilometers with enormous market potential. It was during the Ottoman rule that the haj or ritual pilgrimage to Mecca greatly increased in importance and this in turn spurred trade between the far reaches of the empire and increased the importance of the cities.

Ottoman rule greatly impacted the daily lives of the peoples of the region, even to this day. The Ottoman urban designers divided urban space into two parts: public and private. The public part of the city was where commerce took place in the center of the city and had large streets running from the center to the city limits. Residential areas were more irregular in their road layout and are characteristic of the "Arab" town style. This design focuses trade and commerce into a relatively confined location and although it appears in towns from medieval periods, the Ottomans formalized the city center into a bedestan or center for international trade. There is also a correlation between the size of the Great Mosque of the town with the size of the bedestan which leads one to believe that economic practices did not change all that much from earlier times.

Town activities radiated outward from the mosques and bedestans in roughly concentric rings, although this arrangement was also affected by historical and geographical factors including terrain and rivers. This radiating pattern is very similar to those found in modern cities including New York City where the city was built up around Manhattan island with the lower portion of the island as its focus. Today, lower Manhattan is still the focus of trade and commerce because of New York's World Financial Center and Wall Street. It is apparent that the Ottoman cities were designed to stimulate trade, much as modern city planners try to accomplish.

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