The Accession of Abdülaziz in the Provinces and the Capital

On 14/26 June 1861 Abdülmecid passed away and his brother Abdülaziz rose to the Ottoman throne. The accession of Abdülaziz was celebrated on an unprecedented scale both in the capital and across the Empire's far-flung provinces. A closer look at some of these celebrations, detailed in archival reports and on the pages of newspapers from the period, shows a remarkable degree of continuity from the previous reign. What is more intriguing and significant is the even higher level of communal engagement in a ceremony which was more complex and had a correspondingly higher degree of organisation and coordination than ever. Here is an example from Sivas, a medium-sized town in east-central Anatolia where ‘a welcoming ceremony and stipulations of honour and respect (merasim-i istikbal ve şerayit-i ta’zim ve ibcal)’, occasioned by the news of the accession, took place. It drew various groups of schoolchildren, both Muslim and Christian, along with their teachers, to a vast open plain outside the town called Kabak Square. The multitude gathered there included everyone from commoners to regional notables, council members and district heads. In addition, Armenian bishops and monks as well as millet notables (mu’teberan-ı millet) and elders were in the crowd. Finally, mounted police, regular imperial troops and a band of musicians were also present.

The ceremony commenced with much pomp at a carefully chosen auspicious time and with the district governor (mutasarrıf) at the head. A seat of honour (kürsi) was placed before numerous pitched tents. Above it, the substitute judge (naib efendi), standing up, read, ‘in perfect observance of custom (kemal-ı adab ile)’, the sublime decree announcing the new accession. The empty seat of honour probably stood for the absent sultan. As Douglas Brookes has shown, according to Turkic royal mythology, the throne signified power by way of distinguishing the one sitting on it in a group setting in which everyone else stood up. So this ceremonial element, the only one of its kind so far identified, may point to a higher degree of abstraction in the provincials’ experience of the ruler.