Containing Sultanic Authority: Constitutionalism In The Ottoman Empire Before Modernity

Abstract

Constitutionalism in this study refers to political ideas and actions, normative values and legal structures as well as restrictive mechanisms and compactual agreements of constitutional import, produced within the Ottoman polity owing to its own experiences in government and political theory with no direct influence from Europe. The history of constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire by no means displays a linear progression from a disorderly government to an orderly one, or from an arbitrary regime to a constitutional one.