The Grand Vizier and the Divan

The Ottoman state, for most of its six centuries of rule, was administered by a single, central body: the Divan-ı Hümayun, the Imperial Council. The council was presided over by the Grand Vizier, who served as the sultan’s deputy and, in the long centuries when the sultans withdrew behind the walls of the harem, as the de facto head of government. Beneath the Grand Vizier sat a hierarchy of ministers, judges, and senior officials — the Kazaskers, the Nişancı, the Defterdar, the chief eunuch of the harem — who together constituted the principal administrative apparatus of the empire.

Key dates

c. 1380 — the divan takes recognizable shape under Murad I in Bursa, then Edirne.
1453 — the divan moves with Mehmed II to Constantinople; the Kubbealtı becomes the audience window.
1523–1536 — Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha as Grand Vizier, the high classical example of the office.
1654–1676 — the Köprülü family supplies six Grand Viziers in twenty-two years.
1838 — the Defterdarate and the Nişancı are absorbed into the new Tanzimat ministries.
1876 — the Kanun-ı Esasi formalizes the Grand Vizier as a constitutional prime minister.
1922 — the Grand National Assembly abolishes the sultanate, and with it the Grand Vizierate.

The Divan-ı Hümayun

The Divan-ı Hümayun was, in its classical form, a council of senior officials that met four times a week — on Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays — in the domed chamber of the second courtyard of Topkapı Palace. The chamber, a low, octagonal, dome-roofed room adjoining the Kubbealtı (the audience window of the sultan’s private chamber), was fitted with a low divan along the walls, a central brazier, and the cushioned seats of the principal members. Sessions began with formal prayer and ended with the Kubbealtı audience, at which the Grand Vizier ascended to the third courtyard, kissed the sultan’s hand, and reported the council’s decisions.

The membership of the divan varied over the centuries. In its early form, in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the council was a relatively small body consisting of the Grand Vizier, the two Kazaskers, and a few senior commanders; in its later form, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the membership had expanded to include the Nişancı, the chief Defterdar, the Kapı Ağası (chief white eunuch), the Kızlar Ağası (chief black eunuch), the Kethüda Bey (chief of staff), the Reisülküttab (chief of the chancery), the Şeyhülislam, and a number of other senior officials. The total membership of the seventeenth-century divan could exceed twenty.

The divan’s business was substantial. It heard petitions from subjects — by the seventeenth century, hundreds of petitions a session — and decided cases too important for the ordinary kaza courts. It supervised the execution of imperial orders. It debated the major questions of war, peace, taxation, and provincial administration. It reviewed the credentials of new ambassadors. It issued the formal documents that regulated the appointments, transfers, and dismissals of provincial governors, which were then implemented by the provincial governors and the millets across the empire. The minutes of the council’s decisions, recorded in the Mühimme Defterleri, constitute the most important single source for the history of the Ottoman central government. Provincial appeals were recorded separately in the Ahkâm-ı Şikâyet Defterleri of the kadı courts.

“When the Divan meets, the Grand Vizier and the Pashas sit according to their rank; the petitions are read, the ambassadors are heard, and the matters of war and peace are debated. The whole is done with great order and great silence.” — Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Turkish Letters (1555, published 1595)

The Grand Vizier: From Deputy to Prime Minister

The Grand Vizier was, in formal theory, the sultan’s deputy (vekîl-i mutlak), appointed to exercise the sultan’s full authority in the day-to-day business of government. The Grand Vizier received the mühr-ü hümayun (the imperial seal) at his appointment, and with it the right to sign death warrants, to issue orders to the provincial governors, to command the armed forces in the field, and — at least in theory — to take the major decisions of state in the sultan’s name. The office carried a salary, a household, a retinue, and a residence at the Sublime Porte (Bâb-ı Âli), the seat of the Grand Vizierate and the central administrative apparatus of the empire.

The importance of the Grand Vizierate grew steadily across the centuries. Under the early sultans, the Grand Vizier was a relatively subordinate figure, presiding over a council on which the sultan was often present; under the later sultans, the office had become the principal executive of the state. Several Grand Viziers — Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha under Suleiman the Magnificent, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha under Suleiman and his successors, the Köprülü family of the seventeenth century, and Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha under Ahmed III — exercised an authority that, in the European political vocabulary of the time, would have been called prime ministerial.

The office was extraordinarily dangerous. The sultan’s favor could turn on a single miscalculation, a single military defeat, a single intrigue of the harem. The Grand Vizier who fell from favor was often executed, often after a public ceremony of disgrace in which his seals were returned to the sultan and his household was dispersed. Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, who served three sultans for a total of fifteen years and was assassinated by a discontented Janissary in 1579, was an exception that proved the rule. Carter Findley, in Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire (1980), has calculated that more than half of the Grand Viziers of the classical period were dismissed by force, and roughly a third were executed — figures that, in any comparative sample, are unusually high.

The Kazaskers: Chief Judges of the Empire

The Kazasker of Rumelia and the Kazasker of Anatolia were, in the classical period, the two principal members of the divan after the Grand Vizier. Each Kazasker was the head of the judicial hierarchy of his half of the empire, and each had the right to appoint and dismiss the judges (kadıs) of his jurisdiction. The two Kazaskerate offices were the senior positions to which members of the ulema could be appointed, and they were the second most prestigious offices of the empire.

The rivalry between the Rumelian and Anatolian Kazaskers was a permanent feature of Ottoman politics, and the balance between them was carefully maintained. The Rumelian Kazasker, who had jurisdiction over the more populous and richer European provinces, was generally considered the more senior; but the two were roughly equal in rank, and each had the right to attend the divan and to sign the major documents of state. The offices were abolished in 1836 as part of the Tanzimat reform of the judicial system, when their judicial functions were absorbed by the new Ministry of Justice (Adliye Nezareti); the older arrangement — in which the kaza judge held both criminal and civil jurisdiction and the mülk and şer’î courts operated in parallel — gave way to a secular Nizamiye court system modelled on the French.

The Nişancı: Chancellor of the Empire

The Nişancı was, in the classical period, the head of the chancery, the office that issued the formal documents of the Ottoman state. The Nişancı’s principal duty was to affix the tuğra, the calligraphic monogram of the reigning sultan, to the major documents of state: firmans, berats, treaties, capitulations, and the like. The Nişancı was also a senior member of the divan, with the right to attend its sessions, to sign its decisions, and to advise the Grand Vizier on matters of legal and historical precedent.

The chancery of the Nişancı was one of the most important institutions of the empire. It issued, recorded, and transmitted the documents that regulated appointments, transfers, and grants; it maintained the mühimme and ruus registers that constituted the official memory of the state; and it drafted the berat (the patent of appointment that conferred a mülk, dirlik, or ocaklık right) and the ferman (the imperial command) that ran the tımar system and the provincial administration. The entire timar system — the assignment of cavalry prebends, the transmission of grants on the death of a holder, the auditing of provincial registers — depended on the berat and the ruus registers issued under the Nişancı’s seal. The office of the Nişancı was abolished in 1836, when its functions were absorbed by the new Ministry of Foreign Affairs; but the tuğra continued to be affixed to imperial documents until the abolition of the sultanate in 1922.

The Defterdar: Chief Financial Officer

The Defterdar was the chief financial officer of the empire. In the classical period, there were two Defterdars, one for Rumelia and one for Anatolia, who together accounted for the central revenues of the empire. The Defterdars were responsible for the assessment and collection of the principal taxes, for the disbursement of the central treasury, for the auditing of provincial accounts, and for the preparation of the annual budget. The Defterdars had the right to attend the divan and to sign its decisions on financial matters.

The financial administration was transformed by the reforms of the nineteenth century. The Defterdarate was abolished in 1838, and its functions were absorbed by the new Ministry of Finance, which was established in 1838 as part of the Tanzimat reforms. The new Ministry of Finance, modelled on the French Ministère des Finances, took over the assessment and collection of taxes, the management of the central treasury, the administration of the public debt, and the preparation of the budget. Rhoads Murphey has shown that the abolition of the Defterdarate and the creation of a single Ministry of Finance was, in practice, less a clean break than a series of contested reorganizations; the older provincial finance officials did not disappear overnight, and the new ministry had to negotiate with them for the better part of a generation.

The Reisülküttab: Foreign Secretary

The Reisülküttab was, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the chief of the chancery and the head of the bureau that handled the empire’s relations with the foreign powers. The Reisülküttab conducted the day-to-day business of diplomacy — the receipt of ambassadors, the dispatch of envoys, the negotiation of treaties — under the supervision of the Grand Vizier. The office was a relatively late development, dating from the late sixteenth century, and it grew in importance as the empire’s relations with the European powers became more continuous and more complex.

The Reisülküttab was the principal point of contact between the Sublime Porte and the foreign embassies in Istanbul. The tercüman (dragomans), the corps of Ottoman and Greek interpreters who handled the day-to-day translation, became one of the most important professional groups in the capital — and, in the late eighteenth century, the source of a small fortune for the Phanariot Greek families (the Mavrocordato, the Ypsilanti, the Mourouzi) who came to dominate the post. The office of the Reisülküttab was the nucleus of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs established in 1836.

The Şeyhülislam: Chief Mufti

The Şeyhülislam was the chief mufti of the empire, the head of the ulema hierarchy, and the senior religious official of the Ottoman state. The Şeyhülislam’s principal duties were to issue fatwas on the major questions of religious law, to authenticate the sultan’s major acts, and to advise the Grand Vizier and the divan on the religious aspects of state policy. The Şeyhülislam had the right to attend the divan, although he did not always do so; and his fatwas on matters of religious law were binding on the kaza courts and the ulema hierarchy.

The position of the Şeyhülislam in the Ottoman constitution was delicate. The Şeyhülislam was appointed by the sultan, served at the sultan’s pleasure, and could be dismissed at any time; but the office carried an authority in matters of religious law that even the sultan could not override. The tension between the religious authority of the Şeyhülislam and the political authority of the Grand Vizier was a permanent feature of Ottoman politics, and the resolution of the tension depended on the personalities involved. The office was abolished in 1924, with the abolition of the caliphate, and its functions were absorbed by the new Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) of the Turkish Republic.

The Sublime Porte: The Seat of the Grand Vizierate

The Bâb-ı Âli — the Sublime Porte, as the European diplomats called it — was the principal administrative complex of the Ottoman central government, situated in the heart of Istanbul, near the mosque of Süleymaniye and the Hagia Sophia. The Sublime Porte was the seat of the Grand Vizier, the divan, the chancery, the foreign ministry, and the principal offices of the central administration. Foreign embassies addressed their notes to the Sublime Porte; the Grand Vizier was sometimes called the Porte in European diplomatic correspondence; and the term passed into the diplomatic vocabulary of the nineteenth century as a synonym for the Ottoman government.

The complex was substantially rebuilt in the nineteenth century — the present eclectic building, with its neo-classical façade, dates from 1832–1838 under Mahmud II — and it remained the seat of the Grand Vizierate until the abolition of the sultanate in 1922. The building today houses the governorship of Istanbul.

The Ministries of the Tanzimat Era

The Tanzimat reforms of the nineteenth century transformed the divan into a European-style council of ministers. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was established in 1836, the Ministry of Finance in 1838, the Ministry of the Interior in 1836, the Ministry of War in 1846, the Ministry of Justice (replacing the Kazaskerate) in 1836, the Ministry of Public Works in 1838, the Ministry of Commerce in 1839, and the Ministry of Public Instruction in 1857. Each ministry was headed by a minister, appointed by the Grand Vizier and responsible to him; the ministers together constituted the Meclis-i Vükela (Council of Ministers), a successor to the old divan.

The Tanzimat ministries were reorganized repeatedly over the following decades. The 1876 constitution formalized the structure: a Grand Vizier appointed by the sultan, ministers appointed by the Grand Vizier, and a Council of Ministers collectively responsible to the sultan and (in theory) to the elected chamber of deputies. The post of Grand Vizier survived in name until 1922, but the function had been transformed into something close to a European-style prime minister — a transformation described in detail in the article on the Tanzimat reforms, which were the principal cause of the change.