The Ottoman institution of petitioning when the sultan no longer reigned: a view from post-1908 Ottoman Palestine Yuval Ben-Bassat Abstract The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 helped transform the time-honored Ottoman petitioning system. The reinstatement of parliamentary life, the reintroduction of the suspended constitution of 1876, and the lifting of the ban on the press and political action all generated profound political and social changes. Subjects’ petitions reflected these changes vividly and in often surprising detail. As the sultan became a figurehead with little actual power, petitions which hitherto had been addressed to the sultan either directly or through the grand vizier and had requested his benevolence and mercy, while also granting him much needed legitimacy, now began to be sent instead to the Council of State (Şura-yı Devlet), the parliament, and various government ministries. Their content changed as well, as will be shown in this article through an analysis of dozens of petitions from Ottoman Palestine. Petitions now sought to obtain political rights and ensure civil equity and constitutional rights. In focusing on rights, the rule of law, and the deficiencies of the former system, the petitions echoed changes in popular discourse and mirrored the transformation from justice as a sultanic prerogative to constitutional and civil law. Keywords: Grand vizier; Ottoman constitution; Ottoman ministries; Ottoman Palestine; Ottoman parliament; Ottoman petitions; Young Turk Revolution. Introduction In November 1909—in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, the restitution of a constitutional regime, and the final dethronment of Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909)—several sisters from Jaffa, a town on the Yuval Ben-Bassat, Department of Middle Eastern History, University of Haifa, 3498838, Mount Carmel, Haifa, Israel, yuval@research.haifa.ac.il. New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 56 (2017): 87–103. © New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 2017 10.1017/npt.2017.6 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY 87 terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/npt.2017.6 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Haifa, Library, on 22 Apr 2017 at 03:43:17, subject to the Cambridge Core