COST A36 Tributary Empires Compared
The Theme of Imperial Decline and Resistance
Vienna, 11-13 April 2008
Scientific Report
During the last few decades students of the Roman, Mughal and Ottoman empires have changed their notions of processes of imperial decline dramatically. Where previously the histories of these empires had been saddled with burdensome narratives of moral corruption and destructive oppression, scholars are now more inclined to see transformation and adaptation instead of inevitable decline. It is notable, however, that this trend in scholarship has taken place separately within the historiographies of each empire. This working group meeting, therefore, sought to nuance and to bring further debates about imperial decline by comparing and juxtaposing these separately generated histories.
The Vienna meeting on decline was the 7th in the Tributary Empires Compared series. Previous meetings had identified some key approaches to comparison: historiography and historical-sociology (Copenhagen, Warsaw), and dealt with both central government institutions (Istanbul) and the view from the provinces (Athens). These themes were used as stepping stones for selecting the specific issues and organising the sessions of the Vienna meeting: “The myth of perpetual decline”, “Anatomies of Decline” and “Decline from the Margins”. A final and fourth session attempted to focus on a sub-theme of previous meetings, visual culture: “Decline in art, architecture and coinage”.
The first session, “The myth of perpetual decline” addressed the historiographies and tropes of decline. A common theme to emerge from the individual papers was how the notions of decline which shaped the narratives of 19th century historians had often been lifted from debates about moral corruption within still vibrant imperial societies. In both the Ottoman, Mughal and Roman empires the notion of decline and moral corruption formed an essential and contested part of political discourse. The Mughals, for instance, liked to present themselves as virtuous reformers who brought back order to Indian society after the dissolution of the “corrupt” Delhi Sultanate. Equally the notion of corruption could function as a vehicle for critique of the state of current politics and strategically to assert privilege and power for oneself, such as in Roman republican thought.
The second session, “Anatomies of decline” then went on to explore and question different models of power in relation to specific processes of imperial decline and of transformation. Focus was on state-formation, military power and government control. Key themes to emerge were that decline, understood as loss of control of territories, had to be seen as the result of a combination of external pressure and internal response. Equally, it was important to distinguish between decline of individual empires and then the decline of agrarian imperial polities during the long 19th century where the rise of the nation-state changed conditions of state-formation radically and rendered the form of tributary empire obsolete. Finally a group of papers attempted to nuance various theories of imperial decentralisation and fragmentation. Processes often understood as decentralisation of governmental power appear from a different perspective as a reflection of deepening penetration of provincial societies by the state and as renewal of imperial power.
The third session, “Decline from the margins. Provincialising ideologies, provincial appropriation and challenge” combined elements from session one and two to explore how provincial groups often engaged strategically in debates about imperial corruption either to appropriate government and assert a position within the imperial order or alternatively to challenge central authority and foster the construction of separatist identities. These were not, by the way, mutually exclusive options; in practice they were often interconnected.
The final session on visual culture then added a fourth dimension to the preceding discussions. It served to stress the multi-facetted character and complexities of decline. “Decline” was not to be taken as a single, unitary phenomenon. Incidentally, the session also functioned as a useful summary of the key themes of the meeting. The first paper demonstrated how much change in the urban fabric of late Roman society reflected change and renewal, in short transformation, rather than the often automatically assumed decline. Provincial societies had responded vibrantly to the challenges and sentiments of the time. The following paper then went on to demonstrate how imperial governments engaged in discourses about moral corruption and for in stance might visually present themselves as restoring order on a corrupt past. The next speaker shifted the emphasis by analysing Ottoman coinage reform not as a sign of decline, but of ability to respond to external pressures. The last speaker with a treatment of the Vienna Neue Hofburg project returned to the long 19th century, the end of the age of agrarian or tributary empire.
In conclusion, one of the great benefits of the meeting was to demonstrate the value of confronting the understanding of decline within separate disciplinary traditions with each other and allow them to cross-fertilize.
It was fortuitous that the Austrian Academy of Sciences through its Secretary General Prof. Herwig Friesinger agreed to be the local partner and the meetings could be held in their beautiful historical premises and that the Institute of Iranian Studies volunteered to help organising the lunches.
Ebba Koch Peter Fibiger Bang
Local organiser Chair
Abstracts
I ‘The Myth of Perpetual Decline’
Josep M Fradera (Universitat Pompeu Fabra/Barcelona)
Reasoning Spanish decline beyond contemporary assessments and political propaganda
The talk will reassess three well-known European conceptualizations of the Spanish imperial decline: those of Montesquieu, Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham. Ranging between economic and political ideas, and anthropological identifications of the so-called “national character”, they established a pervasive idea of the Spanish imperial decline. By contrast, I would like to suggest how Spaniards faced the same topic, and how they occasionally reached different conclusions. Finally, I would like to stress how those different perceptions should be placed in their appropriated context of imperial competition.
Sunil Kumar, University of Delhi
The Decline Literature: the discussion (or not) of the Twilight of the Delhi Sultans in Sultanate and Mughal historiography
The paper compares narratives on the decline of the Delhi Sultanate from the Sultanate and Mughal periods (from the mid-fourteenth and the turn of the sixteenth centuries). The writings of these authors rely on each other and yet differ sufficiently to present contrasting pictures of ‘decline’. While many modern historians have read these texts as simple narratives of a Sultanate in crisis, the Persian historiography of the 14th and 16/17th centuries deployed the idea of ‘decline’ creatively and with contrasting agendas. The paper unravels the history of the narrators and contextualises their discourse on ‘decline’. It seeks to enlarge on the changing conceptions of ‘decline’ itself, not from a modernist perspective, as is often done, but a pre-modern and early modern one where it carried different resonances.
Sophia Papaioannou, University of Athens
The Roman conception of decline from late Republican fears of corruption to late antique Christian regeneration
The rhetoric of decline represents a traditional topos in Roman political thought: it features in the prologues of the texts of all major Roman Historians, and it becomes a leitmotif of Roman Historiography in the broader sense of Roman construction of historical consciousness and awareness of themselves as nation with a past that it is known, and hence subject to critique and appreciation, and with a future that is not known, but it may be projected and prepared. Governed by this ideology, Roman authors from the very beginning of Rome’s literary tradition saw it as their duty to battle moral decline through their writing, by means of illustrating the magnitude of decline, and of suggesting a remedy in reviving the past, and subsequently, introducing it as a model to fashion the future.
Along parallel lines, Christianity originates in decline, the separation of the human beings from paradise, which became progressively wider, ultimately reaching despondent status, not unlike the incurable disease that plagued the Roman society of Sallust’s, Livy’s and Tacitus’ days. Similarly to the treatises of the Roman Historians, Christian doctrine offered a model, or remedy, to reach the primordial ideal, the embrace of Christianity or the teachings and divinity of Christ, the son of God who was sent to die on earth in order to point the way to salvation and bridge the gap to paradise. The similar take on decline and revival, fall and rise, that underscores the two ideologies, the political Roman and the spiritual Christian, interact in interesting ways, in the post 3rd c. period, typically called Late Antiquity, which coincides with the beginning of radical transformation in the political structure of the Roman empire. In this paper, I shall examine the course of development in the rhetoric of decline from the Christian vs. the pagan perspectives, in the period between the late third and the early fifth centuries, the time which witnesses the rise of Christianity to predominance as the official religion of the Roman empire. My analysis will point out that these two traditions developed their decline philosophy independently, but they gradually came to use it against each other, as Christianity was spreading among the elites and, following the Milan Edict, the imperial court. Also, I shall show that as Christianity was becoming more and more the religion of the ruling elite, and ultimately, of the Roman emperor himself, its rhetoric changed its tune, with promises of revival and renaissance replacing the pessimistic talk of impending doom. Two prominent literary texts-products of these times of malleable ideology and beliefs, Macrobius’ Saturnalia and Augustine’s City of God, offer themselves as case studies to substantiate my arguments
Baki Tezcan, University of California, Davis
From Veysî to Üveysî: Ottoman stories of decline in comparative perspective
Since the publication of Bernard Lewis’ “Ottoman Observers of Ottoman Decline” in 1962, Ottoman decline literature has drawn a lot of attention internationally. As the historical narrative of Ottoman decline came under critical scrutiny, however, recent scholarship questioned the way in which Lewis interpreted this literature as an objective representation of reality. This paper evaluates the works of Lewis and his critiques through a comparative analysis of two early seventeenth century Ottoman works, a treatise entitled the “Dream-book” (khvâb-nâme) by Veysî and a short piece in verse known as the “Admonition to Istanbul” (nasîhat-i Islâmbol) by a certain Üveysî.
II Anatomies of Decline
John Hall (Montreal)
The sociology of imperial decline
This paper undertakes discrete tasks, in the following order: the definition of empire, together with sociological theories as to the workings of agrarian empires; the nature of decline in general; brief comments on the decline of modern empires; elaborated comments on the decline of agrarian empires, with particular reference to Rome.
Peter Fibiger Bang, Copenhagen
Tributary empire and state segmentation: Romans and Mughals compared.
This paper seeks to re-examine our notions of the character of the Roman Empire and more broadly of the tributary empires of agro-literate society in general. The Roman Empire occupies a position within Western intellectual thought as the archetypical imperial state. The Roman imperial experience has, as it were, become the standard, against which other empires and even present political concerns are often measured. Notice, for instance, how Hardt and Negri in their Empire, analysing the modern world economy, feel a need to draw on ancient Rome or how the Roman experience of decline and collapse was present as a subtext in Kennedy’s bestselling The Decline of Great Powers.
While Rome occupies a central position in the discourse on empire, it would be fair to say that it has triggered very divergent responses through the centuries. Roughly speaking, commentators have taken one of two positions. Either the empire has been perceived as benevolent civiliser, a harbinger of peace, law and order; or, on the contrary, it has been portrayed as a ruthless leviathan, an abusive Oriental despotism and insatiable plundering machine, destroying the civil society it was supposed to govern. Neither model is really satisfactory, and not just because they may seem caricatures of the underlying historical reality.
Traditionally the early and high empire has been seen mainly in the prism of the law and order paradigm – the period when humanity was most happy and prosperous as Gibbon claimed. The late empire, on the other hand, suffers from the image of an Oriental despotism. During the last couple of decades, however, the law and order paradigm has come under heavy fire. It is now clear that the Roman state was far too weak, to thinly spread on the ground as it were, to effectuate the law and order ideal. The notion of a clearly ordered bureaucracy for instance seems highly questionable, though it is still defended by some.
On the other hand, students of the so-called Oriental despotisms proper, the Ottoman, Mughal and Ming/Ch’ing empires have now seriously undermined the old conception of these states. The state was not as arbitrary and abusive as hitherto believed. It simply was not strong enough to dominate society in that manner. It could not fulfil the role of an Oriental despotism, so to speak. It too had to accommodate its rule to the underlying society.
In other words, our conception of tributary imperial states is in need of revision. Starting from a critical examination of the tradition of historical sociology (Weber, Mann…), the paper seeks to explore alternative models of state formation in tributary empires through comparative analysis of patterns of state-formation in the Roman and Mughal empires. Comparing developments in the Roman empire with the Mughal experience may for instance help challenge old-fashioned evolutionist models. In these, the transition to late antiquity was understood as a failed development, a step back from modernity. There is an irony in this. The late empire developed a far more elaborate bureaucracy than the emperors of the “golden” period ever possessed. With the expansion of the imperial base, however, and greater integration of local elite groups in the state fabric, tendencies towards fragmentation increased. Traditionally this kind of development has been explained in terms of oppressed groups rebelling against increased state demands. This is too simplistic. Segments of the elite deeply integrated in and profiting heavily from the state-system contributed strongly to the process of imperial erosion in some areas. The Mughal comparison suggests an alternative interpretation. As state-penetration increased, the remuneration offered to the elite-groups administering the expansion increased even more. State expansion and more heavily entrenched elites were, so to speak, identical processes. The result was greater pressure towards fragmentation. The notion of segmentary state, as developed by historians of pre-colonial India to provide a less unitary idea of pre-industrial states, offers a promising model of this basic condition of tributary empires.
Jeroen Duindam, University of Utrecht
Vienna Gloriosa: heart of a series of ‘declining’ Empires?
After the first Ottoman siege in 1529, the ‘king of the Romans’ and later emperor Ferdinand established his court in Vienna. Apart from brief interludes in the later 16th century and in the 1740’s, Vienna would remain the main seat of the emperor. After the definitive demise of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the city would resurface as the capital of a new Habsburg Empire; after the 1867 Ausgleich, it shared its role as capital city with Budapest.
The Holy Roman Empire, self-appointed successor state of Charlemagne and the Roman Empire, has usually been depicted in terms of decline, as a hopeless jumble of rulers and rights only vaguely associated with the proud notion of imperial power. The emperor may have resided in Vienna, but was this city ever the capital and true heart of an empire? How and where did the relations between emperor and Reichsstände take form? In my paper I will argue whether or not the early modern Holy Roman Empire can be seen as a structure in decline. Recent scholarship underlines the resilience and adaptability of the ‘imperial constitution’, but the question remains whether this empire can usefully be compared to other power structures subsumed under the term empire.
A brief last section of the paper deals with the ‘experiment’ of 1867-1914: was its breakdown necessary and related to the question of nationalities, or did it simply succumb to the pressures of war? The relevance of this sidetrack is that it allows me to reassess the loose multi-ethnic ‘Habsburg solution’ in which loyalty to dynasty and religion prevailed over ethnic loyalties – an element frequently alluded to in discussions both of early modern and 19th century Habsburg empires.
Dariusz Kolodziejczyk, University of Warsaw/Polish Academy of Sciences
Decline or decentralization? The case of Ottoman ayans
In the beginning of the paper the author examines the ‘fetish of centralization’ as it developed in the 19th- and 20th-century European historiography, providing some telling examples from Poland, Germany, and Russia. Subsequently, he turns to the recent discussion on the impact of early kemalist Turkish historiography on our perceiving of the Ottoman past.
Since the publication of Halil Inalcık’s seminal article in 1977 (Centralization and decentralization in Ottoman administration), numerous authors (Barbir, Genç, Rizk Khoury, Salzmann etc.) have challenged the notion of decline, once applied to the 18th-century Ottoman state and society, observing such positive phenomena as the rise of provincial economies, integration of distant regions into the Ottoman world, etc.
Several recent biographies of the Ottoman provincial notables (ayans), once presented as unruly rebels, whose ambitions and greed had hastened the Ottoman decline, depict these individuals as committed Ottomans (Gradeva), although whose understanding of loyalty towards Istanbul might have differed substantially from that of the Porte officials (and of many a modern historian).
Even the most notorious and successful rebel, Muhammad Ali (or Mehmed Ali), typically labeled as the founding father of modern Egypt and modern Egyptian nation, can be justly pictured as a full-blooded Ottoman (Fahmy). The author proposes to go even further and examine the life and career of another ‘founding father’, the Serbian national hero Kara Djordje. To what extent can this Christian notable be treated as yet another Ottoman ayan?
Bert Fragner, Vienna
„Crisis of Empires? – Iranianate State-Craft in the 18th Century from the Levant to India“
My main concern is the question whether the concept of “rise, climax and decline” can really serve as an appropriate model for generalizing descriptions and interpretations of historical processes, with special regard to “empires”?
This problem should be exemplified by the political development of eighteenth century Iran and its neighboring areas. In 1722, and according to some, in 1732, the so-called Safavid Empire has apparently come to an end. The tribal leader Nader-Shah (from the tribe Afshâr) established in due course a new reign over Iran presenting himself as the Shah, thus as the successor of those kings who ruled Iran until 1722 /1732 / 1736 and belonged to the Safavid dynasty, and even Nader Shah´s reign found a violent end in 1747 when he was killed by his slave. In the following decades, we find Iran in a turmoil of political instability until eventually about 1785 a new ruler could fortify his position as an all-Iranian “Shah” – Âghâ Mohammad Shâh, the then leading figure of the tribe Qâjâr – who became the founder of a new dynasty – paradoxically enough because he was a castrated eunuch.
At a first glance, this dramatic sketch would insinuate that there was enough matter for “decline” in this 18th century – but, was there really decline? At closer inspection, there will emerge a lot of doubt whether the meaning of “decline” is really to be applied appropriately to the complex situation of the lands between the Middle East and the subcontinent, at that time.
Jack A. Goldstone (George Mason University)
Imperial decline and the cycles of world-history from antiquity to the early modern
Imperial decline is in fact two separate phenomena: internal decay, which is a failure to sustain the social reproduction of imperial organizations, and external power-shift, which is a relative change in power capabilities between competing imperial systems. Either process can lead to imperial decline, and often both are implicated in a reinforcing manner. Thus internal decay often leads to an external power-shift, allowing once-powerful empires to be invaded by formerly weaker adversaries. Conversely, the pressures of an external power-shift that leaves an imperial system at an increasing disadvantage can create or exacerbate problems – such as debt or excessive military spending – that lead to internal decay. However, the timing and dynamics of the two forms of decline are distinct, leading to problems when the two are conflated. To give one example that has been troubling: the Ottoman empire experienced a period of internal decay from 1580 to 1649, followed by an extended period of recovery and reorganization from 1650 to 1860. However, during this period the Ottomans suffered an external power-shift relative to Europe, which was embarking on industrial development, especially in the latter part of this period. After 1860, this shift in relative power led to increasing intervention by European powers in Ottoman affairs, leading to pressures for reform and internal nationalist conflicts that contributed to internal decay. In general, internal decay is a cyclic process, reflecting long cycles of demographic and economic change and followed by reconstruction and recovery. However, external power-shift is often a secular shift in power that leads to steady expansion or steady contraction/decay of the shifting imperial systems.
III Decline from the Margins
C A Bayly, Cambridge & Seema Alavi, Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi
Decline, decentralisation and diaspora
This paper contends that the recent replacement by scholars of the concept of the ‘decline’ of classical and early modern empires by that of ‘decentralisation’ or ‘transformation’ does not provide an entirely adequate model for comparative history. The role of ideas, including that of decline itself, must be brought back into the picture as active agents in historical change. In this case, themes deploring the corruption of office, the degeneration of the patriarchal family and the decline of public morality were common to the Roman, Mughal and Ottoman empires and played a part in political debate and the construction and reconstruction of these polities. Secondly, the paper considers the particular histories of families and professions during periods of transformation in imperial histories. It draws attention to the fact that the social and economic fragmentation of empires has often been accompanied by the emergence of new conceptual communities, which occupied the space of the former imperial governments, or expanded far beyond them, capitalising on the ebb tide of imperial legitimacy. Thereby, new empires of the mind came to populate the terrain of empires of the sword. This is illustrated by the case of the Unani hakims (physicians) of late Mughal and early colonial India.
Patricia Crone, Princeton Institute for Advanced Study
Rebellious Prophets
My paper will look at empires, more specifically that of the early Abbasids (who came to power in 750), from the point of view of the conquered peoples and survey some of the ways in which they are drawn into imperial society, and the diverse ways in which their arrival poses a cultural and/or political threat to the bearers of empire. The focus will be on a set of rebels in Iran in the century after the revolution that brought the Abbasid caliphs to power, two of whom had, at least in some sense, been members of Muslim society before they turned against it. Their revolts were long-lived, but successfully suppressed, and they were not seen as signs of decline by contemporaries, nor are they by modern scholars – quite the reverse. But they are a good starting point for a discussion of the problem posed by people who do not feel they belong in the society they have been drawn into, yet no longer have the real or imagined ancestral community to which they would like to go back.
Juan Carlos Moreno García, CNRS, University Lille 3
Challenging the Pharaoh? Temples and royal power in ancient Egypt (3rd and 2nd millennium B.C.)
Abstract. The organization of the rural landscape in pharaonic Egypt during the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC might prove to be a useful indicator of the transformations which affected the state and the balance of power within it. Third millennium sources show that a network of agricultural and administrative centres of the crown were scattered all over the country; temples were also prominent institutions, specially those around the capital, whereas the provincial ones were relatively small and frequently controlled by powerful local families. Provincial temples and crown centres provided a basis of power for the local elite, opened the way to their integration in the pharaonic administration and deepened the social differences in areas outside Memphis. But from the Middle Kingdom on, and specially during the New Kingdom, the balance of power between temples and crown centres were increasingly favourable to the sanctuaries, which became specialized productive and managerial units gradually cumulating a growing part of the wealth of the kingdom. The growth of the empire in Nubia and the Levant allowed the king to collect enough resources as to continue to frame the Egyptian elite. But when these external resources disappeared at the end of the 2nd millennium the finances of the state collapsed, and the temples emerged as a counter-power that effectively controlled most of the agricultural resources of the kingdom. Temples became powerful enough as to defy the power of the Pharaoh and to limit his ability to frame the elite of Egypt.
Dimitris Kastritsis (St.Andrews)
From "Empire of the Gazis" to "Ottoman Empire" -- Rise, decline, and resistance
This paper examines the question of imperial centralization and reaction from the margins in light of evidence from the Ottoman civil war of 1402-13. The Ottoman civil war was brought about by Timur's defeat of Sultan Bayezid at the Battle of Ankara, and marks the end of the first Ottoman attempt at a centralized empire on the Near Eastern model. Moreover, it represents the first (but not last) case of confrontation between two rival imperial models: the centralized sedentary empire and the (quasi-) nomadic raiding confederation. It therefore provides a fruitful field for testing ideas about imperial rise, decline, and resistance.
Most modern historiography presents the rise of the Ottoman Empire during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a protracted struggle between centralizing and decentralizing forces. For most of the fourteenth century, the Ottomans were egalitarian raiders plundering in the name of religion; by 1453, they had become a centralized empire on the Near Eastern model. For this transformation to take place, elements that were central to the previous order (raiders, nomads, dervishes) had to be marginalized as power moved into the hands of servants of the central state (slaves, ulema, bureaucrats). The classic evidence for this are the Ottoman Anonymous Chronicles, which are said to record the voices of those who lost out in the process.
The above account of early Ottoman history is derived from the still controversial Wittek thesis. While it clearly has its merits, it is in need of considerable elaboration if it is to be more than a mere caricature of a very complex process. It is necessary to answer questions such as these: Were the various Ottoman princes of the civil war for or against centralization, and how? What role did this play in the eventual outcome of the war? And how is it possible that the famous Sheikh Bedreddin, who led a large social revolt in 1416, was both a dervish supported by raiders and also an Islamic judge in the service of a centralizing Ottoman prince (who was also supported by raiders)? It is hoped that this paper will finally begin to shed some light on these questions.
IV Decline in Art, Architecture and Coinage
Ebba Koch, University of Vienna
Decline as Imperial Propaganda: Visual strategies in Mughal history painting of Shah Jahan’s Winsor Castle Padshahnama
This paper examines how the notion of decline was put into the service of imperial propaganda by the historians and artists of the Mughal emperor/padshah Shah Jahan (1628-58), the builder of the Taj Mahal. Of particular value for the recognition of art history as a hermeneutical tool is that the concept of decline and corruption was expressed with purely visual means in his official history painting.
I am returning here to my own argument put forth in King of the World:The Padshahnam:; An Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (1997). I suggested there that under Shah Jahan the form of art was systematically explored as an instrument of absolute rule, and that the paintings created for the Padshahnama, the great history of his reign, are highly complex artistic creations, which in their ambition and dialectic reach out far beyond their apparent function, to illustrate a historical narrative in the tradition of Islamic and Indian book painting. Programmatic statements were expressed with aesthetic means; the stylistic quality served as an interpretational key. Through the manipulation of antithetic modes – the linear abstract versus the naturalistic illusionistic -- painting developed its own pictorial code and produced its own narrative, to support and supplement historiography, to comment on it, to paraphrase it and sometimes even to contradict it.
In my paper I shall take this interpretation one step further and argue that what I previously regarded as naturalistic freedom on the part of a chief painter (Payag) in his representation of a key court reception (darbar) scene conforms at a closer look fully to the imposed imperial code and was to express the notion of decline and corruption of the previous reign as opposed to the ideal rule of the new age of Shah Jahan.
Nikolaus Schindel (Numismatic Commission, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna)
The Beçin coin hoard and the Ottoman monetary system in the late 16th /early 17th century
Numismatists as well as economic historians have so far seen the late 16th and early 17th century as a period of severe crisis of Ottoman monetary production. The artistic appearance of the coins themselves as well as an alleged debasement during the reign of Murad III (1574-1595) seemed to advocate this view. However, in the absence of relevant archive material, it was little less than a fairly superficial look at Ottoman coins, as well as pieces of information of Ottoman chronicles on which this idea was based.
During excavations conducted by the Institute for Art History of Ege University Izmir in Beçin (near present-day Milas in SW-Turkey), a coin hoard consisting of almost 50.000 Islamic and 831 European coins was unearthed. It ranges from the early 16th to the early 17th century, consisting mostly of small silver pieces (akçes) of the Ottoman sultans Murad III, Mehmed III (1595-1603) and Ahmed I (1603-1617).
Representing by far the largest Ottoman coin hoard which ever came to the attention of scientific numismatics, the Beçin material offers for the first time the opportunity for a detailed analysis of the Ottoman monetary system of the above-mentioned sultans. Contrary to the concept of decline and crisis, the Beçin hoard shows a surprisingly high degree of central control of minting, as well as a very high level of quality when it comes to weight control and, even more astonishing, to the purity of the silver coins. Therefore, one cannot claim any longer that Ottoman money bears witness to an overall political, social and economic decline in the late 16th and early 17th century.
Andreas Nierhaus, Vienna
The Vienna Hofburg in the 19th Century and the End of Residential Palace-Building in Europe
For more than 700 years, the Vienna Hofburg was among Europe’s most important political centres. It had been already noticed by early modern visitors, that the architecture and interior decoration of the royal and imperial palace could not correspond to its high political claim. For centuries, wing by wing was added to the Hofburg, so that, to a certain extent, the heterogeneity of the complex and respectful „conserving“ of older parts were seen as symbol for the dynastic tradition of the Habsburg family. Since the early 18th century, huge projects for a new imperial palace were submitted, but most of them remained on paper. Together with the conception of the “Ringstrasse” area after 1857, a last attempt was made to give the Hofburg a homogenous and – in the sense of 19th century art theory – “monumental” appearance: by connecting a new “ideal” palace with the two court museums, the Austrian emperor should be represented as ruler over “art” and “nature”. In spite of nearly unrestricted financial means, the complex could not be finalized even in a time of almost fifty years. Its failure also marks the decline and end of dynastic residential palace-building in Europe.