The Early Relations between the Ottoman State and the Orthodox Church: An Instance of Istimâlet

Shortly after the capture of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II made Gennadios Scholarios the new ecumenical patriarch, defining at the same time the rights and privileges of the Orthodox Church under Ottoman rule. When in the 1530s, some Muslim leaders demanded that the city’s remaining churches be closed, Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent refused on the basis of (a travesty of) a legal inquiry. A close reading of Greek and Ottoman sources sheds light on the accommodating policy, called istimâlet, which the Ottoman state pursued toward the Orthodox Church.