What the Rescript Promised

The Ottoman state had governed its non-Muslim subjects for centuries through the millet system, in which a recognised religious community administered its own personal law, schools and charities under its own hierarchy, and paid a poll tax in exchange for protection. It was a workable arrangement and an unequal one. The rescript of 1856 set out to keep the communities and remove the inequality.

Its promises are specific. Life, honour and property are secured to every subject without distinction of class or religion. All subjects are admissible to public employment and to the civil and military schools. Mixed tribunals are to hear cases between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the rules of evidence are to be reformed so that testimony is not discounted by the witness's faith. Forms of speech that mark a subject as inferior on grounds of creed are abolished. Each community is to draw up a written constitution for its own affairs and submit it for approval. Churches and synagogues may be repaired, and new ones built, under stated procedures. The poll tax levied on non-Muslims is replaced by a payment in lieu of military service, since non-Muslims were not conscripted.

The document was published on 18 February 1856. The Congress of Paris opened a week later, and the treaty that ended the Crimean War recorded the sultan's communication of it while stating that the powers derived no right to interfere in Ottoman internal affairs.