Ottoman Constitution (1876)

1 The Ottoman Constitution of 1876 has a special significance being the first written constitution in the Muslim world, with the arguable exception of the 1858 Tunisian Destour of Ahmed Bey, which did not create an even partially elected legislative body (Perkins 18–19). Politically, the proclamation of the Constitution was the culmination point of the nineteenth-century reforms. These reforms affected large areas of public life, such as the modernization of the armed forces and the civilian bureaucracy, a more modern taxation system, the introduction of secular...