The Later Tanzimat and the Ottoman Legacy in the Near Eastern Successor States

The period of Ottoman decline (from approximately the late seventeenth- to the early nineteenth-century), the system of checks and balances was grossly undermined and arbitrary and despotic government prevailed both at the center and in the provinces. In the later Tanzimat period (1856–71), by contrast, the emphasis was placed on strong state organs and a powerful bureaucracy, armed with a new set of laws borrowed from western legal systems. The maintenance of law and order in the cities and towns was performed by an officer called a subashi, who was one of the kadi's prominent aides and who was “a legal police and a high security official with executive authority”. The kadi's deputies also came from the local 'ulama, whether in the principal court where he presided or in the neighborhood courts of big cities or in towns throughout the province.