The Sublime Porte and the "Jewish Question"

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject History Europe - Other Countries - Ages of World Wars, grade: 90.0, Georgetown University, language: English, abstract: In the period from the turn of the nineteenth century to the postbellum period following the First World War, history saw the rise of large, multiethnic, multiconfessionalist, colonial Empires. These empires were forced to face the challenges inherent in the administration of such states, however there was one among them that had notably different experience from the rest due to the sheer scope of religion's influence on and official standing in state matters.

This state is the Ottoman Empire. One of the many aspects that makes the Ottoman Empire markedly different from the other empires of this period, besides, of course, the fact that its state religion was Sunni Islam, was the Ottoman Empire's approach to the so-called "Jewish Question." The "Jewish Question" was the name given to the centuries old debate in those states in which Jews resided as to the appropriate status and treatment of that society's Jewish population. In this current age in which the Jewish people enjoy a greater amount of freedom and prosperity than any other time since Antiquity, it is perhaps easy for one not well versed in the history of the Jews to not realize that the current positive status that Jews enjoy in most of the world's societies is a relatively recent phenomenon and it is in the very period noted above, from the turn of the nineteenth century to after World War I, that this shift in how Jews were perceived and treated began.

However, it is not the point of this essay to examine the overall change and continuity in the treatment of the Jewish people globally nor is it to compare how their statuses in different nation-states. Rather, the question posed by this essay is much more specific and focused: How did the relationship between the Ottoman Empire's Jewish subjects and both the Ottoman government and specifically its Arab subjects change over the period of Ottoman decline, roughly from the turn of the nineteenth century until the Empire's dissolution in 1922? The conclusion this essay comes to is that although the relationship between the Ottoman government and the Ottoman Jewry improved over the period of Ottoman decline, the relationship of Ottoman Jews and the Arab population of the Empire worsened and became increasingly strained during this period.