Timothy Parsons

Charlemagne and Carolingian Military Administration

In the West during the Middle Ages and beyond, the idea of empire was driven by the history of Rome as understood from the works of Roman historians and the survival of imperial material civilization. Although the Roman experience, in general, served as the imperial touchstone for Europeans, it was the later or more specifically the Christian Roman empire, which gradually emerged following the edict of toleration issued by emperor Constantine I (r. 306–37) at Milan in 312, that served to animate the future of the imperial idea. A matrix of images of the later Roman empire in the West was vitalized by the famous ‘coronation’ of Charlemagne (d. 814) at Rome on Christmas day 800. Subsequently, the efforts of the Ottonian dynasty, especially under Otto the Great (r. 936–73), maintained this process, first in regard to the so-called German empire and later (as Len Scales discusses in Chapter 10) the Holy Roman Empire. The imperial idea was a subject of ongoing interest. This was especially the case in regard to those medieval rulers and their advisers who worked diligently to connect Romes successor states to its erstwhile empire through what scholars have come to call imitatio imperii . Of importance to this process of maintaining a more or less close identification with the imperial past were a variety of religious ceremonies. These included traditional Latin prayers for the health of the ruler and his family, and for the success of his administration of the state. Perhaps the most elaborate ceremonies were those quasi-religious efforts engineered to celebrate military victories. Coinage, both denominationally with the continued use of solidi and denarii and in terms of images and legends, was yet another means by which the governments of Romes early medieval successor states consciously maintained both ideological and material continuity with the imperial past. The Later Roman Legacy In a more mundane sense, and especially in Gaul, the later Roman empire left an enduring material and institutional inheritance to the Middle Ages. This included a large number of fortified cities and towns, a magnificent system of roads and bridges and excellent port facilities. However, the most important imperial legacy, at least from an administrative perspective, was the civitas , which later was often called the pagus (pl. pagi ).

The Ottoman Empire (1299–1923): The Bureaucratization of Patrimonial Authority

At its height in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Ottoman empire linked three continents: Asia, Europe and Africa. The empire stretched from the southern borders of the Holy Roman Empire through Hungary and the Balkans to Yemen and Eritrea in the south, controlling much of North Africa and western Asia, and encompassing an array of cultures, languages, peoples, climates and social and political structures. This combination of a vast territory, a diversity of incorporated populations and longevity makes the Ottoman empire a perfect case through which to explore the connection between empire and bureaucracy. The Ottomans demonstrate how premodern empires could have strong bureaucratic features, while retaining a degree of institutional flexibility that enabled imperial, patrimonial and bureaucratic forms of rule to interact with one another. This chapter explores the bureaucratic as well as the patrimonial and non-bureaucratic aspects of rule in the Ottoman empire, especially at the height of the Suleymanic era (1520–66) when a bureaucracy – characterized by routinized office holding, trained office holders and rules and regulations for maintaining office – had taken root at the core regions of the empire. The Ottoman empire was, however, a particularly mixed case because of the complex layering of direct and indirect rule which resulted in variations in the degree of the patrimonial-bureaucratic mix between the core and periphery of the empire. The Ottomans benefitted from both the bureaucratic and patrimonial features of their rule, which sometimes tugged against each other, but also cooperated to routinize Ottoman rule. Conceptualizing Ottoman Imperial Rule The Ottoman state grew out of a small principality at the edges of Anatolia in the aftermath of the decline and parcellization of the Seljuk empire in the later twelfth century CE.Beginning with Osman Gazi (d. 1326), the descendants of the House of Osman both fought and engaged in economic and political relations with their contemporaries across the frontiers. When it suited them, they allied with other frontier lords ( beg s), Christian princes and Turcoman tribes. Even if these alliances were forged as equals, soon enough the Ottomans began to be considered, in religion and in law, as first among them. Osmans son Orhan (r. 1326–62) took the title sultan, typically reserved for the Seljuk rulers, and he struck his own coins.