PLACING THE DANUBIAN PRINCIPALITIES WITHIN THE

COMPOSITE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Micha Wasiucionek*
Throughout the past decades, the Ottoman studies have seen a paradigm change, which
resulted in rejection of the decline concept in favor of new narratives. These changes
have gained little attention among historians of Moldavia and Wallachia, thus missing a
chance of reconceptualizing the place of the Ottomans in the early modern period.
Conversely, the Ottoman scholars by paying closer attention to the Moldavian-Wallachian
developments can gain insight on the processes within the empire. Focusing on the
possible payoffs of reconnecting Moldavian-Wallachian and Ottoman history, this paper
highlights two possible spheres of such cross-feritilization: the study of rebellions and the
rise of the Phanariots.
Keywords: Ottoman Empire; Moldavia; Wallachia; histoire croise; Phanariots; rebellion;
early modern period

In an article published in 2008, Caroline Finkel has posed an important

question concerning the historical heritage of the Ottoman Empire. The
main argument of the paper - appropriately entitled Ottoman History:
Whose History Is This? - was that modern historiographical traditions have
considerable difficulty in dealing with the Ottoman past:
"[Ottoman history] is not just the elephant in the room but one wearing
luminescent pajamas, impossible to ignore and harder still to deal with. [...] As
a result, the Ottoman centuries remain at the margins in many serious
writings about the past and otherwise-thoughtful analyses of the present. In
journalistic shorthand a vast imperial history is condensed to a not-so-subtle
pejorative, in which some six hundred years when the Ottomans held sway fall
on the wrong side of an imagined good/bad dichotomy, and that is all that
anyone needs to know about it."1

Categorizing the different frameworks within which the Ottoman

experience should be incorporated, the scholar roughly divides different
national traditions of history writing into the post-Ottoman successor
states and the Europe-beyond-the-frontier.2 Quite interestingly, while she
provides a comprehensive list of these traditions, Romania fails to enter
either of these categories. While this could be an unintended omission on
Finkels part, it is nonetheless quite telling about the perception of the
position of the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (which in
the second half of the nineteenth century became the core of the
** European University Institute, Florence (michal.wasiucionek@eui.eu)
1 Caroline Finkel, Ottoman history: whose history is it?, International Journal of Turkish
Studies 14, 1-2, 2008, p. 1.

2 ibid., 68.

Romanian national state). As satellites of the Ottoman Porte throughout

the early modern period, they hardly count as Europe-beyond-thefrontier; on the other hand, the lack of direct Ottoman administration on
their territory contributed to the fact that the they fall outside the purview
of the Ottoman scholarship, being lumped into the category of tributary
states or more appropriately satellite polities of the Porte.3
This resulted in the relative disjuncture and reciprocal lack of interest
between scholars on the Ottoman Empire and the Danubian principalities,
as well as the main directions of research on the Ottoman-MoldavianWallachian relations. Two approaches can be discerned in this respect:
firstly, the study of the legal status of the Danubian principalities vis--vis
the Porte, with the focus on the existence or non-existence of the
capitulations granted to the rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia; secondly,
the studies of international history, treating the Ottoman Empire as one
of the actors in the diplomatic chessboard. 4 As Viorel Panaite has pointed
out, the question asked by the Romanian historians was why the
Ottomans never conquered the Danubian principalities rather than how
did the principalities fit into the imperial edifice.5
This perception of the Ottoman Empire as a foreign country among the
Romanian scholarship has contributed to the growing disconnection from
the current trends in Ottoman studies. Even in relatively recent
publications, the rhetoric of decline or the Turkish yoke are recurrent
despite their rejection by the Ottomanist scholars. In short, the Ottoman
Empire that emerges from the writings of historians of the Danubian
principalities is strikingly out of touch with the revisions made by their
counterparts dealing with well-protected domains in the past three
decades and vice versa.
However, the development of scholarship on the Ottoman Empire has
pulled the rug from under the existing master narrative of the relationship
between the Danubian principalities and the Porte. Apart from the
rejection of the decline narrative, the very clear-cut division between
satellite polities and the Ottoman provinces has been subject to doubt. In
his works, Viorel Panaite has brought attention that the alleged non3 I prefer the latter term as more encompassing, including not only the states (itself a
term subject to some doubt) that actually paid the tribute to the Porte (Transylvania,
Dubrovnik, Georgian kinglets, Moldavia, Wallachia), but also the polities that were
actually subsidized by the Ottoman center, the Crimean Khanate or Hejaz.

4 Among others, see: Mihai Maxim, rile Romne i nalta Poart : cadrul juridic al
relaiilor romno-otomane n evul mediu, Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedic, 1993; Tahsin
Gemil, rile romne n contextul politic internaional (1621-1672), Bucharest: Editura
Academiei R.S.R., 1979; Mircea Soreanu, Marii viziri Kprl (1656-1710): relaii politice i
militare ntre rile Romne i Imperiul ottoman, Bucharest: Editura Militar, 2002.

5 Viorel Panaite, The Legal and Political Status of Wallachia and Moldavia in Relation to
the Ottoman Empire, in The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the
Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Gbor Krmn and Lovro Kunevi, Leiden Boston: Brill, 2013, p. 910.

conquest was a non-issue for the Ottoman officials, which considered

Moldavia and Wallachia on par with other provinces, the preservation of
their autonomy stemming from customary arrangements rather than
capitulations.6 At the same time, in his recent contribution to the topic,
Dariusz Koodziejczyk and has stressed that the division between the
inside and outside of the empire was not a clear faultline, but rather a part
of a spectrum within a composite imperial edifice: thus, the division
between satellite polities and the normal eyalets was far from clear-cut.7
This reconceptualization of the Ottoman Empire underpins the present
contribution, which argues for the bringing the Ottoman Empire back into
the study of the early modern Danubian principalities and vice versa. As I
will point out, this does necessitates changing the scales and implicit
assumptions, with which we take on the study of both political arenas.
Most importantly, it requires the move beyond the state-oriented approach
in favor of a focus on practices, cultural transfers and social interactions in
a cross-border perspective. In return, the proposed recalibration of our
apparatus can bring us a deeper understanding not only of the political
relations between the Porte and its tributaries, but also help us understand
seemingly unconnected developments in both the Danubian principalities
and the imperial center. In short, it can provide us with the new, positive
master narrative of the Ottoman-Romanian entanglement of the early
modern period.
Due to the limited space, the present paper focuses on the programmatic
aspect of such a model. In broad strokes I present some hypotheses, which
show the possibilities that applying histoire croise methodology to the
developments occurring in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. 8 By
contextualizing the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia within the
context of the Ottoman imperial composite structure, we gain a clearer
picture of the entanglement of their political actors into the power
networks of the empire, as was in the case of rebellion. At the same time,
the comparison between the phenomena occurring in the Ottoman eyalets
serve as an object of comparison with the Moldavian and Wallachian
developments.
In order to flesh out the idea, in the first section I will discuss the changing
perspectives on the Ottoman Empire, which form the backbone of the
6 Viorel Panaite, Rzboi, pace i comer n Islam. rile romne i dreptul otoman al
popoarelor, 2nd edition, Historia, Iai: Polirom, 2013, idem, The Legal and Political
Status, pp. 942.

7 Dariusz Koodziejczyk, What is inside and what is outside? Tributary states in Ottoman
politics, in The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the SixteenthSeventeenth Centuries, ed. Gbor Krmn and Lovro Kunevi, Leiden - Boston: Brill,
2013, p. 432.

8 Bndicte Zimmermann and Michael Werner, Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung. Der

Ansatz der Histoire croise und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen, Geschichte
und Gesellschaft 28, 2002, passim, Bndicte Zimmermann and Michael Werner, Penser
l'histoire croise: entre empirie et rflexivit, Annales ESC 58, 1, 2003, passim.

argument. The two next sections will present their possible applicability for
the Moldavian-Wallachian context and the possibilities such an enterprise
offers us. Due to limited space, I will focus on two major phenomena the
interrelationship between the Ottoman and Moldavian-Wallachian political
culture and the rise of the Phanariots. While at the first glance, these
matters have little in common, they both inscribe into the wider context of
Baki Tezcans Second Ottoman Empire.
As I have mentioned above, the last three decades have brought an
overall re-evaluation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the
case of Ottoman Empire. Rather than the watershed, which marks the
period of decline and degeneration of classical institutions, scholars
increasingly perceive this period as a time of change and overhaul of
imperial structure, stressing the adaptability and flexibility of the Ottoman
edifice. The Porte suffered a number of upheavals throughout this period,
with the weakening position of the sultan, the rise of the political
households and the gradual phasing out of the timar system. However, the
result was not a degraded, worse version of the glorious days, but rather
a completely new social, economic and political consensus that emerged.
Probably, the boldest attempt to provide a new narrative of the changes is
the work by Baki Tezcan, who argued that the late sixteenth century was
the beginning of the second Ottoman Empire, a polity strikingly different
in comparison with the previous period. 9 According to him, the underlying
socio-economic changes, most of all the monetization of the economy and
the influx of Muslim reaya into the ranks of the elite, contributed towards
the devolution of power from the imperial palace towards larger sections
of the population.10 The effect was the emergence of what Tezcan boldly
calls Ottoman proto-democracy, with the Muslim political nation (now
largely incorporated into the askeri class) as a check on the imperial
center.11
These developments were by no means smooth; on the contrary, the
seventeenth century was a time of violent upheavals, both in the political
center and in the provinces. At the Ottoman capital, the grandee
households vied for power and for the positions; in the provincial context,
the rise of banditry and the revolts of governors took their toll on the
population. However, at no point were these tendencies dangerous to the
very existence of the Ottoman state; as Karen Barkey points out, celali
rebellions were not directed against the Porte; instead, they constituted
just one step of the process of bargaining with the center. 12 The rebels
were more maverick clients rather than opponents of the empire, and they
9 Baki Tezcan, The second Ottoman Empire : political and social transformation in the
early modern world, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

10 Baki Tezcan, The Second Empire: The Transformation of the Ottoman Polity in the
Early Modern Era, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 29, 3,
2009, p. 558.

11 Tezcan, The second Ottoman Empire.

were treated as such: rather than cracking on the rebellious governors, the
Porte proved accommodating and often exonerated the rebel leaders,
selectively incorporating them into the administration. As a result, the
status of a rebel or bandit was reversible and some grandees crossed
the line between legality and illegality numerous times.13
As Tezcan points out, the new consensus of the Second Ottoman Empire
took shape in the eighteenth century. The flow of economic resources
between the center and the periphery epitomized by the tax-farming
arrangements of iltizam and malikane brought the horizontal integration
of the elite, the local notables cooperating with the imperial grandees. 14 At
the same time, the entrance of the Muslim reaya into the askeri class
contributed to the redrawing of the identity markers. As most Muslims
were now askeri, the very askeri/reaya divide lost its importance in favor
of confessional identities. The socio-economic changes followed, as
numerous scholars pointed out to the growing phenomenon of
Ottomanization defined by Hlya Canbakal as:
"[A] different and possibly stronger degree of integration between the imperial
center and the provinces than had been the case under the 150-year-long
classical centralist regime. Ottomanization has come to denote the
emergence of an integrated elite through the incorporation of local people into
the administrative and distributive networks of the central state and
naturalization of the members of the Ottoman officialdom into local
societies.15

12 Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: the Ottoman Route to State Centralization,
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 2. See also: Marios Hadjianastasis, Crossing the
line in the sand: regional officials, monopolisation of state power and 'rebellion'. The case
of Mehmed Aa Boyacolu in Cyprus, 1685-1690, Turkish Historical Review 2, 2, 2011,
p. 158; Suraiya Faroqhi, Seeking wisdom in China: an attempt to make sense of the
Celali rebellions, in Zafar nama: Memorial volume to Felix Tauer, ed. Rudolf Vesel and
Eduard Gombr, Prague: Enigma Corporation, 1994, p. 101; Jane Hathaway,
Introducton, International Journal of Turkish Studies 8, 1-2, 2002, p. 4.

13 Molly Greene, A shared world: Christians and Muslims in the early modern
Mediterranean, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, p. 35; Ehud R. Toledano, The
Emergence of Ottoman-Local Elites (1700-1900): A Framework for Research, in Middle
Eastern Politics and Ideas. A History from Within, ed. Ilan Papp and Moshe Maoz,
London: I.B. Tauris, 1997, p. 1489.

14 Ariel Salzmann, Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State,
Leiden - Boston: Brill, 2004; Ariel Salzmann, An Ancien Rgime Revisited: "Privatization"
and Political Economy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire, Politics and Society
21, 4, 1993, p. 409; Dina Rizk Khoury, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman
Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 8.

15 Hlya Canbakal, Society and politics in an Ottoman town: 'Ayntab in the 17th century,
Leiden - Boston: Brill, 2006, p. 61.

As one can see, the Ottoman Empire of the seventeenth-eighteenth

century was a different polity altogether and its basic power: much of the
sultans power devolved to the other actors, the social hierarchies were
redrawn, political culture changed and a cultural convergence occurred
between the actors at the central imperial arena and local elites.
If we look through these lens on the interactions between the Porte and
the Danubian principalities, in many respects we find striking similarities,
although bearing their own, local imprint. One of such phenomena is
rebellion and resistance to the Porte. Throughout the seventeenth century,
the celali rebellions and banditry rocked the Ottoman provinces, most
importantly in Anatolia; at the same time, we find a number of instances of
rebellion against the Porte among the Moldavian and Wallachian
voievodes.
While both groups of rebellion occupy a central place in respective
historical traditions, the divergence between the Romanian and Ottoman
scholarship has resulted in the lack of any comparative endeavor. On the
one hand, the Romanian historiography has perceived Moldavian and
Wallachian revolts within the context of the struggle against the Turkish
yoke and national aspirations of the Romanians, the celali phenomenon
usually mentioned just as a sign of purported Ottoman decline and
breakdown of public order. At the same time, the Ottomanists, while
paying attention to explaining the rise of banditry in Anatolia, at the same
time, usually relegate the revolts in the Danubian principalities as lying
beyond their area of interest. In effect, the celalis and the rebel voievodes
seem to have nothing in common.
However, there are striking similarities between the political strategies of
applied by the rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia and the governors-turnedrebels. Since I have discussed this matter in a different contribution, I will
provide just a small summary here only briefly.16
Despite allegedly different motivations driving the celalis and MoldavianWallachian rebels, there is a great degree of overlap in the political
strategies these two groups adopted in dealing with the Porte. Just as was
in the case of the bandit leaders, the rebellion did not necessarily mean a
clear break with the Ottoman system, but was one step in the process of
bargaining, not precluding the possibility accommodation. For instance,
one of the national voievodes of Wallachia, Matei Basarab (1632-1654),
while capturing the throne with against the candidate supported by the
Porte and nurturing contacts with the Christian neighbours, never broke up
entirely with the imperial center. Rather, just as in the case of the
prominent celalis, they often swiftly reconciled with the Porte, contending
themselves with the reconfirmation on the throne.
The conduits between the Ottoman and Moldavian-Wallachian were the
patronage ties cultivated between the Porte grandees and the voievodes
16 The paper Celali Voievodes? The strategies of rebellion and the transfer of political
culture between the Ottoman and MoldavianWallachian political elites in the 17th
century, presented at the CIEPO-21 Symposium, Budapest, 7 th-11th October 2014.

and boyars alike. As the conflict between Matei Basarab and Vasile Lupu in
the 1630s makes clear, there was a clear interconnection between the
factionalism in the Danubian principalities and that at the imperial center.
While Vasile Lupu in his attempts to extend control over both Danubian
principalities profited from the support of Tabanyass Mehmed Pasha and
the Chief Black Eunuch, El-Hac Mustafa Agha, his adversary turned to the
protection of the sultans favorite, Silahdar Mustafa Pasha. 17 Thus, the
developments in neither of these political arenas can be satisfactorily
understood without taking into consideration the logic of factionalism in
the other one.
However, this relationship between the Ottoman officials and MoldavianWallachian elites in the cases of rebellion went further. When Matei
Basarab opposed the Portes appointee, Radu Ilia, in his bid for the
Wallachian throne, his actions were not oriented against the Ottoman rule
in general, aiming for obtaining the recognition of the imperial center
instead. The particular consequence and the strategy of rebellion and
subsequent accommodation was strikingly similar to that of the celali
governors of that time. This was by no means an accident, as the voievode
acted in concord with his patron, the beylerbey of z, Abaza Mehmed
Pasha, who instigated him to rebel and offered protection at the Porte. The
Ottoman official, arguably the most famous and successful celali leader
himself, this time appeared as a patron of the Wallachian voievode,
facilitating his communication with the Porte and without doubt largely
influencing the strategy of Matei. Thus, in this case, we have a direct link
between rebellion, cross-border factionalism and the transfer of political
culture between the Ottoman elite and the one of Moldavian-Wallachian
political arena.
Another topic that cries for such a perspective is the rise of the Phanariots,
of crucial significance for our understanding of the eighteenth century for
both political arenas. In traditional Romanian historical narrative,
influenced by the political context of Romanian historiography and politics
of the nineteenth century, the so-called Phanariot system has been
presented as a top-down measure imposed unilaterally by the Ottomans in
order to ensure the loyalty of the principalities to the Porte and resulted in
the virtual takeover of the principalities by Istanbul-based Greek families. 18
However, this view was criticized by numerous scholars, starting from
Nicolae Iorga, who pointed out that the Phanariots were not Greek
national clique, but rather a composite familial elite, which found
consensus with the local elites.19
17 Constantin C. Giurescu, Uciderea veziurului Mohamed Tabani Buiuc, sprijintorul lui
Vasile Lupu, Revista istoric 12, no. 3 (1926): 101; Miron Costin, Letopiseul rii
Moldovei dela Aron Vod ncoace, ed. P.P Panaitescu, Bucharest: Fundaa Regal pentru
Literatur i Art, 1943, p. 102.

18 For a recent example of such an approach, see: Petric Dumitrache, Instituiile

centrale ale Principatelor Romne ntre sistemul politic european i cel otoman (16831756), Anuarul Institutului de Istorie "A.D. Xenopol" 44, 2007, p. 295.

These conclusions were further fleshed out by other scholars, like Paul
Cernovodeanu, who pointed out that among the elite of the principalities,
most of the top positions remained within the hands of the local families. 20
At the same time, other scholars criticize both the chronology, as well as
the very existence of the Phanariot regime as such. 21 However, the
Romanian historiography generally failed to produce a new master
narrative of the Phanariot period and as a result, the status of Phanariots
oscillates uneasily between the despotic agents of the Porte and
enlightened reformers.
The serious reconceptualization of the Phanariot phenomenon within the
context of the Ottoman Empire and its developments in the same period,
we devise a new way of thinking about Phanariots. As Christine Philliou,
the Phanariots were par excellence an Ottoman elite, and in many
respects shared the lot of their polity, becoming another case of an
elephant in luminescent pajamas, unclaimed by any successor
historiography.22 Thus, their history should be inscribed into their Ottoman
context in order to understand their expansion to the Danubian
principalities.
A key to understanding the process of Phanariotization of the MoldavianWallachian elite lies to my mind in the changing shape of power networks
operating between the center and the periphery, and more precisely,
between central and peripheral elites. The studies of numerous scholars as
Dina Rizk Khoury, Ariel Salzmann and Hlya Canbakal, have pointed out
that the process of Ottomanization of the Muslim notables was taking
place exactly in that period.23 This undirected development stemmed from
the spread of tax-farming arrangements of iltizam and malikane, which
brought closer the central and peripheral elites and created vested
interests for the latter in the preservation of the Ottoman governance
system. A cultural integration followed, which contributed to the

19 Nicolae Iorga, Au fost Moldova i ara Romneasc provincii supuse fanarioilor?,

Bucharest: Imprimeria Naional, 1937; Andrei Pippidi, Phanar, phanariotes,
phanariotisme, Revue des tudes sud-est europennes 13, 2, 1975, 236.

20 Paul Cernovodeanu, Mobility and traditionalism: the evolution of the boyar class in
the Romanian principalities in the 18th century, Revue des tudes sud-est europennes
24, 3, 1986, p. 253.

21 Bogdan Murgescu, "Fanarioi" i "pmnteni". Religie i etnicitate n definirea

identitilor n rile Romne i n Imperiul Otoman, in rile Romne ntre Imperiul
Otoman i Europa cretin, Iai: Polirom, 2012, pp. 539.

22 Christine M. Philliou, The Paradox of Perceptions: Interpreting the Ottoman Past

through the National Present, Middle Eastern Studies 44, no. 5, 2008, p. 665.

23 Khoury, State and Provincial Society, p.; Salzmann, An Ancien Rgime Revisited,
eadem, Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire, p. ; Canbakal, Society and politics, p. .

emergence of the Ottoman-local elites, peripheral, but culturally and

politically oriented towards the imperial center.24
How does it relate to the rise of the Phanariots? As I would argue, the
Phanariotization of the Danubian principalities and more generally,
Christian peripheral elites was in many respects a Greek Orthodox
variant of Ottomanization processes occurring with respect to the Muslim
elites of the empire. As was the case with the Muslim elites of the empire,
the cultural pull of the imperial center occurred, following the increasing
entanglement of familial, economic and political ties between the center
and the periphery. According to Ehud Toledano, the Ottoman imperial
culture was not an ethnic one, but rather a 'highly articulated culture,
which distinguished them from anyone who did not belong to the imperial
elite.25 In the studies on the eighteenth century Orthodox identity we can
find a strikingly similar theses. As Victor Roudometof and Christine Philliou
point out, the spread of Grecophone culture throughout the Balkans in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not an ethnic or national
phenomenon, but formed a part of elite cultural capital, which allowed for
upward mobility.26
What would that mean for our narrative of the Ottoman-MoldavianWallachian relations? Firstly, the reframing of the Phanariotization as a
variant of a more general trend of Ottomanization dismantles the vision of
Phanariots as agents of the Porte imposed on the Danubian principalities
and of the system as a pre-conceived measure by the Ottomans to keep
Moldavia and Wallachia in line. Just as Ottomanization was an unintended
consequence of new patterns of governance and revenue-extraction, so
the integration of the Phanariot and local elites would seem as a result on
the levels of social practice rather than a conscious policy. It would also
force us to rethink chronology, a trend already present in the Romanian
historiography, with many scholars introducing the concept of a prePhanariot period in the second half of the seventeenth century, or moving
the beginning of the phenomenon from 1711-1716 back to 1659.
However, if the road to a Phanariot rule was an unintended process,
driven by the underlying integration between the periphery and the
center, one should then stress continuity of the seventeenth century of
which the appointment of Nicolae Mavrocordat was just a conjencture,
which eventually took root.27 Instead of signifying a dawn of new era, this
24 Ehud R. Toledano, The Emergence of Ottoman-Local Elites (1700-1900): A Framework
for Research, Middle Eastern Politics and Ideas. A History from Within, ed. Ilan Papp and
Moshe Maoz, London: I.B. Tauris, 1997, p. 1489.

25 ibid., p. 1523.
26 Victor Roudometof, From Rum Millet to Greek Nation: Enlightenment, Secularization,
and National Identity in Ottoman Balkan Society, 1453-1821, Journal of Modern Greek
Studies 16, 1, 1999, p. 23; Christine M. Philliou, Biography of an empire: governing
Ottomans in an age of revolution, Berkeley: Berkeley University Press 2011.

event was one of the signs of the growing entanglement between a center
and a periphery
In the field of Ottoman studies, such a conclusion would also mean
rethinking of one of the aspects of the new narrative proposed by Baki
Tezcan. In his discussion of the changing markers of difference and the rise
of the Muslim political nation, the scholar implicitly assumes that
Phanariots were rather a relic of the old system than the part of the new
one.28 This seems grossly misguided, since it was the second half of the
seventeenth century, which marked the rise of the Greek Orthodox elite to
the prominence they were to enjoy in the following period, which makes
them one of the crucial elements of the Second Ottoman Empire.
The narrative of the growing integration of the center and the periphery
and the rise of the Phanariots in the Danubian principalities provide a way
to explain this phenomenon within the model of Tezcan. Just as the
Ottomanization contributed to the emergence of a Muslim imperial nation,
the same occurred with reference to empires Greek Orthodox elites. The
process of Phanariotization and the growing integration between
peripheral and Istanbul-based elites brought the emergence of a Greek
Orthodox imperial shadow nation, which officially separated from the top
positions of governance nonetheless found its niche within the Ottoman
system of governance. While the Christian-Ottoman nation was barred
from acceding the top positions of power, they nonetheless played a
significant role in managing the fortunes of the empire both in the center
(as dragomans) and in the periphery (as the voievodes of Moldavia and
Wallachia) in this respect it was a shadow nation. It was imperial in the
respect that its fortunes and very existence were closely tied to the
fortunes of the Ottoman Empire itself and its history was rejected by the
future national historiographies from the nineteenth century onwards and
is only recoverable by thinking out of a national box.
As I tried to argue in the context of early modern interaction between the
Danubian principalities, the Ottoman Empire in many respects is an
elephant in luminescent pajamas, hard to deal with and hard to ignore.
By looking at the empire through state-centered and often broken lens,
many Romanian scholars fail to explain adequately not only the dynamics
of relations between the Porte and the Danubian principalities, but also the
internal developments of seemingly unconnected aspects of the respective
internal arenas. The same applies to Ottoman studies, where interest in
the internal workings of Moldavia and Wallachia and their place within the
wider imperial context can provide significant correctives to the new
master narrative of the empire as a whole.

27 Pippidi, Phanar, phanariotes, phanariotisme, p. 232.

28 Baki Tezcan, Ethnicity, race, religion and social class: Ottoman markers of
difference, in The Ottoman World, ed. Christine Woodhead, London and New
York: Routledge, 2012, p. 167.

In this respect, both scholarly communities can draw inspiration from the
fountains near Sf. Spiridon church in Iai. The founder of the fountains,
voievode Grigore Ghica III, placed three inscriptions commemorating his
contribution to the urban landscape of Moldavian capital: in Romanian,
Greek and Arabic. These three inscriptions refer to three identities of the
voievode, later to be executed on the Portes orders: as a voievode of
Moldavia and Wallachia, as member of the Orthodox imperial nation and
as a member of the Ottoman elite. All of them were coexistent within one
individual, and to present him as a fully-fledged person, and without any of
them his picture would be incomplete. The same can be said about the
entangled history of both the Danubian principalities and the Ottoman
Empire without serious engagement between the two fields something
always will be lacking.

Bibliography
Barkey, Karen. Bandits and Bureaucrats: the Ottoman Route to State Centralization.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.
Canbakal, Hlya. Society and politics in an Ottoman town: 'Ayntab in the 17th century.
Leiden - Boston: Brill, 2006.
Cernovodeanu, Paul. Mobility and traditionalism: the evolution of the boyar class in the
Romanian principalities in the 18th century. Revue des tudes sud-est europennes
24, 3, 1986, pp. 249257.
Costin, Miron. Letopiseul rii Moldovei dela Aron Vod ncoace, ed. P.P Panaitescu.
Bucharest: Fundaa Regal pentru Literatur i Art, 1943.
Dumitrache, Petric. Instituiile centrale ale Principatelor Romne ntre sistemul politic
european i cel otoman (1683-1756). Anuarul Institutului de Istorie "A.D. Xenopol" 44,
2007, 291308.
Faroqhi, Suraiya. Seeking wisdom in China: an attempt to make sense of the Celali
rebellions. In Zafar nama: Memorial volume to Felix Tauer. ed. Rudolf Vesel and
Eduard Gombr, Prague: Enigma Corporation, 1994, pp. 10124.
Finkel, Caroline. Ottoman history: whose history is it? International Journal of Turkish
Studies 14, 1-2, 2008, pp. 110.
Gemil, Tahsin. rile romne n contextul politic internaional (1621-1672). Bucharest:
Editura Academiei R.S.R., 1979.
Giurescu, Constantin C. Uciderea veziurului Mohamed Tabani Buiuc, sprijintorul lui
Vasile Lupu. Revista istoric 12, 3, 1926, pp. 98103.
Greene, Molly. A shared world: Christians and Muslims in the early modern Mediterranean.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Hadjianastasis, Marios. Crossing the line in the sand: regional officials, monopolisation of
state power and 'rebellion'. The case of Mehmed Aa Boyacolu in Cyprus, 16851690. Turkish Historical Review 2, 2, 2011, pp. 155176.
Hathaway, Jane. Introducton. International Journal of Turkish Studies 8, 1-2, 2002, pp.
112.
Iorga, Nicolae. Au fost Moldova i ara Romneasc provincii supuse fanarioilor?
Bucharest: Imprimeria Naional, 1937.
Khoury, Dina R. State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Koodziejczyk, Dariusz. What is inside and what is outside? Tributary states in Ottoman
politics. In The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the SixteenthSeventeenth Centuries. Edited by Gbor Krmn and Lovro Kunevi, Leiden Boston: Brill, 2013, pp. , 42132.
Maxim, Mihai. rile Romne i nalta Poart : cadrul juridic al relaiilor romno-otomane
n evul mediu. Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedic, 1993.
"Fanarioi" i "pmnteni". Religie i etnicitate n definirea identitilor n rile
Romne i n Imperiul Otoman. In rile Romne ntre Imperiul Otoman i Europa
cretin, Iai: Polirom, 2012, pp. 539.
Panaite, Viorel. Rzboi, pace i comer n Islam. rile romne i dreptul otoman al
popoarelor. 2nd. Historia. Iai: Polirom, 2013.
The Legal and Political Status of Wallachia and Moldavia in Relation to the Ottoman
Empire. In The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the SixteenthSeventeenth Centuries. Edited by Gbor Krmn and Lovro Kunevi, Leiden Boston: Brill, 2013, pp. 942.
Philliou, Christine M. The Paradox of Perceptions: Interpreting the Ottoman Past through
the National Present. Middle Eastern Studies 44, 5, 2008, pp. 661675.
Biography of an empire: governing Ottomans in an age of revolution. Berkeley:
Berkeley University Press, 2011.
Pippidi, Andrei. Phanar, phanariotes, phanariotisme. Revue des tudes sud-est
europennes 13, 2, 1975, pp. 231239.
Roudometof, Victor. From Rum Millet to Greek Nation: Enlightenment, Secularization, and
National Identity in Ottoman Balkan Society, 1453-1821. Journal of Modern Greek
Studies 16, 1, 1999, pp. 1148.

Salzmann, Ariel. An Ancien Rgime Revisited: "Privatization" and Political Economy in the
Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire. Politics and Society 21, 4, 1993, pp. 393424.
Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State,. Leiden Boston: Brill, 2004.
Soreanu, Mircea. Marii viziri Kprl (1656-1710): relaii politice i militare ntre rile
Romne i Imperiul otoman. Bucharest: Editura Militar, 2002.
The Second Empire: The Transformation of the Ottoman Polity in the Early Modern
Era. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 29, 3, 2009, pp.
556572.
The second Ottoman Empire : political and social transformation in the early
modern world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Ethnicity, race, religion and social class: Ottoman markers of difference,The
Ottoman World, ed. Christine Woodhead, London and New York: Routledge, 2012, pp.
15970.
Toledano, Ehud R. The Emergence of Ottoman-Local Elites (1700-1900): A Framework for
Research. In Middle Eastern Politics and Ideas. A History from Within. Edited by Ilan
Papp and Moshe Maoz. London: I.B. Tauris, 1997.
Zimmermann, Bndicte, and Michael Werner. Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung. Der
Ansatz der Histoire croise und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen. Geschichte
und Gesellschaft 28, 2002, pp. 607636.
Penser l'histoire croise: entre empirie et rflexivit. Annales ESC 58, 1, 2003, pp.
736.