THE OTTOMAN WORLD
The Ottoman empire as a political entity comprised most of the present Middle East (with the principal exception of Iran), North Africa and South-Eastern Europe. For over years, until its disintegration during the First World War, it encompassed a diverse range of ethnic, religious and linguistic communities with varying political and cultural backgrounds. Yet was there such a thing as an ‘Ottoman world’ beyond the principle of sultanic rule from Istanbul? Ottoman authority might have been established largely by military conquest, but how was it maintained for so long, over such distances and so many disparate societies? How did provincial regions relate to the imperial centre, and what role was played in this by local elites? What did it mean in practice, for ordinary people, to be part of an ‘Ottoman world’? Arranged in five thematic sections, with contributions from thirty of the world’s leading specialists, The Ottoman World addresses these questions, examining aspects of the social and socio-ideological composition of this major pre-modern empire, and offers a combination of broad synthesis and detailed investigation that is both informative and intended to raise points for future debate. The Ottoman World provides a unique coverage of the Ottoman empire, widening its scope beyond Istanbul to the edges of the empire, and offers key coverage for students and scholars alike. Christine Woodhead
is Teaching Fellow in History at the University of Durham.
THE ROUTLEDGE WORLDS THE ELIZABETHAN WORLD Edited by Susan Doran and Norman Jones THE BYZANTINE WORLD Edited by Paul Stephenson THE VIKING WORLD Edited by Stefan Brink in collaboration with Neil Price THE BABYLONIAN WORLD Edited by Gwendolyn Leick THE ISLAMIC WORLD Edited by Andrew Rippin THE EGYPTIAN WORLD Edited by oby Wilkinson THE WORLD OF THE AMERICAN WEST Edited by Gordon Morris Bakken THE WORLD OF POMPEII Edited by Pedar W. Foss and John J. Dobbins THE RENAISSANCE WORLD Edited by John Jeffries Martin THE EARLY CHRISTIAN WORLD Edited by Philip F. Esler THE GREEK WORLD Edited by Anton Powell THE ROMAN WORLD Edited by John Wacher THE HINDU WORLD Edited by Sushil Mittal and Gene hursby Forthcoming:
THE ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN WORLD Edited by Augustine Casiday THE ATLANTIC WORLD Edited by William O’Reilly THE VICTORIAN WORLD Edited by Martin Hewitt
TH E O TT OM AN WORLD
Edited by
Christine Woodhead
First published by Routledge Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge Third Avenue, New York, NY Routledge is an imprint of the aylor & Francis Group, an informa business © Christine Woodhead for selection and editorial matter; individual contributions, the contributors. The right of Christine Woodhead to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections and of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act . All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. rademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested. ISBN: –––– (hbk) ISBN: –––– (ebk) Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon
CONTENTS
List of illustrations List of maps List of tables List of contributors Preface
viii ix ix xiv
Note on urkish and technicalities Introduction Christine Woodhead
xvi
PART I: FOUNDATIONS Nomads and tribes in the Ottoman empire Reşat Kasaba The Ottoman economy in the early imperial age Rhoads Murphey The law of the land Colin Imber
kadi courtcenturies A in the Balkans: Sofia in the seventeenth and early eighteenth Rossitsa Gradeva Imarets Amy Singer Sufis in the age of state-building and confessionalization Derin erzioğlu
— Contents —
PART II: OTTOMANS AND OTHERS Royal and other households Metin Kunt ‘On the tranquillity and repose of the sultan’: the construction of a topos Hakan . Karateke Of translation and empire: sixteenth-century Ottoman imperial interpreters as Renaissance go-betweens ijana Krstić Ottoman languages Christine Woodhead Ethnicity, race, religion and social class: Ottoman markers of difference Baki ezcan The Kızılbaş of Syria and Ottoman Shiism Stefan Winter The reign of violence: the celalis c.– Oktay Özel
PART III: THE WIDER EMPIRE Between universalistic claims and reality: Ottoman frontiers in the
early modern period Dariusz Kołodziejczyk Defending and administering the frontier: the case of Ottoman Hungary Gábor Ágoston The Ottoman frontier in Kurdistan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Nelida Fuccaro Conquest, urbanization and plague networks in the Ottoman empire, – Nükhet Varlık The peripheralization of the Ottoman Algerian elite al Shuval
On the edges of an Ottoman world: non-Muslim Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam İsmail Hakkı Kadı
PART IV: ORDINARY PEOPLE Masters, servants and slaves: household formation among the urban notables of early Ottoman Aleppo Charles L. Wilkins vi
— Contents —
Subject to the sultan’s approval: seventeenth- and eighteenth-century artisans negotiating guild agreements in Istanbul Suraiya Faroqhi Literacy among artisans and tradesmen in Ottoman Cairo Nelly Hanna ‘Guided by the Almighty’: the journey of Stephan Schultz in the Ottoman empire, – Jan Schmidt The right to choice: Ottoman, ecclesiastical and communal justice in Ottoman Greece Eugenia Kermeli Ottoman women as legal and marital subjects Başak uğ Forms and forums of expression: Istanbul and beyond, – ülay Artan
PART V: LATER OTTOMANS The old regime and the Ottoman Middle East Ariel Salzmann The transformation of the Ottoman fiscal regime c.– Michael Ursinus Provincial power-holders and the empire in the late Ottoman world: conflict or partnership? Ali Yaycıoğlu The Arabic-speaking world in the Ottoman period: a socio-political analysis Ehud R. oledano
Glossary References Index
vii
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURES . Old bedestan, Istanbul . Inscription over the entrance to the imaret of Mihrişah Sultan at Eyüp, Istanbul . Vakıf complex at Belen, near Aleppo, s . Süleyman in procession through Istanbul, c. . Gazi Hüsrev Bey medrese, Sarajevo . . .
The reign of the celalis: causes, symptoms, characteristics and consequences Thula, Yemen, mountain fortress Shahara, Yemen: suspended bridge leading to a mountain village-fortress . Ottoman and Hungarian/Habsburg garrison troops in border forts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries . Perspective of Bitlis . A room in an upper-class house in Damascus, c. . ‘Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda sabil-kuttab, Cairo, c. . An Ottoman legal scholar at work . Melling’s engraving of a late eighteenth-century coffee-house in Tophane .a A plunge pool, from the Ahmed I album .b Women in a hamam, from Fazıl Enderûnî’s Hûbânnâme ve Zenânnâme . Tavern scene from Fazıl Enderûnî’s Hûbânnâme ve Zenânnâme . A brothel scene, s . Neighbours disturbing a house of sinners . Dervishes in a forest on the Asian side of the Bosphorus . Women looking up at a female figure in the sky, by Vanmour . Ladies picnicking leisurely on the Bosphorus . The grandsons of Ali Paşa of Ioannina . Mehmed Ali mosque, Cairo, mid-nineteenth century viii
— Illustrations —
MAPS
Ottoman towns and cities in Anatolia and the Balkans The eastern and southern Ottoman world Western Syria: eighteenth-century eyalet divisions Ottoman north-eastern frontiers in Europe, c. Ottoman Hungary Plague networks, c.– Provincial power-holders in Anatolia and the Balkans, –
xix xx
TABLES . Campaigns of Selim I . Campaigns of Süleyman . Campaigns after Mehmed III . Decrease in the number of Ottoman soldiers in frontier forts in the vilayet of Budin, – . Ottoman creditors of the Ragusan merchant Bucchia and sums he owed to them at his death . Shares in rural-agrarian malikane tax farms in Aleppo,
ix
CONTRIBUTORS
Gábor Ágoston is Associate Professor at the Department of History, Georgetown University. His field of research includes Ottoman military and economic history and comparative study of the Ottoman, Habsburg and Russian empires. He is the author of Guns for the Sultan () and co-author of the Encyclopedia of the Ottoman empire (). Tülay Artan teaches at Sabancı University, Istanbul. Her research focuses on Istanbul and the Ottoman elite in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and she is currently working on the Ottoman royal hunt. She is the author of the section ‘Art and architecture’ in the Cambridge history of urkey, vol. (). Suraiya Faroqhi is Professor of History at Istanbul Bilgi University. Her latest book is Artisans of empire: crafts and craftspeople under the sultans (). She is currently researching the ways in which Istanbul’s inhabitants during the early modern age made use of the natural resources at their disposal. Nelida Fuccaro is Reader in the Modern History of the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is a specialist on frontier societies and the author of he other Kurds: Yazidis in colonial Iraq () and Histories of city and state in the Persian Gulf: Manama since 1800 (). Rossitsa Gradeva is Associate Professor of History at the American University in Bulgaria a member the Institute of Studies, Sofia. in Shethehas published widely onand Ottoman legal,ofadministrative andBalkan military institutions Balkans and on Muslim and non-Muslim communities. She is the author of Rumeli under the Ottomans 15th–18th centuries: institutions and communities () and War and peace in Rumeli: 15th to beginning of 19th century ().
Nelly Hanna is Professor and Chair of the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations at the American University in Cairo. Her work focuses on social groups outside the establishment, such as artisans, traders and merchants, with a special emphasis on the
— Contributors —
economy and its impact on culture and on society. Her major publications include In praise of books: a cultural history of Cairo’s middle class 16th–18th centuries () and Artisan entrepreneurs in Cairo (1600–1800) and early modern capitalism ().
Colin Imber retired as Reader in Turkish at the University of Manchester in . He is the author of he Ottoman empire, 1300–1481 (); Ebu’s-su’ud: the Islamic legal tradition (); he Ottoman empire: the structure of power (, nd edition, ); and he Crusade of Varna, 1443–1445 (); and is the editor of Norman Calder, Islamic jurisprudence in the classical era (). İsmail Hakkı Kadı is an Assistant Professor at Istanbul Medeniyet University. His PhD dissertation on the role of Ottoman merchants in Ottoman–Dutch trade is being prepared for publication. He is currently researching relations between the Ottoman empire and South-East Asian countries during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hakan T. Karateke is Associate Professor of Ottoman and Turkish Culture, Language and Literature at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. He is currently working on the social history of the Ottoman Turkish language. Reşat Kasaba is Stanley D. Golub Chair in International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the editor of volume of the Cambridge history of urkey: urkey in the modern world () and author of A moveable empire: Ottoman nomads, migrants, and refugees (). Eugenia Kermeli is an Associate Professor at the Department of History, Bilkent University, Ankara. She is interested in Ottoman law and has published articles on land issues and zimmi–Muslim relations in the Ottoman empire. She is currently working on a book on legal pluralism in the Ottoman empire. Dariusz Kołodziejczyk is Professor of History at the University of Warsaw. He is the author of Ottoman–Polish diplomatic relations (), Te Ottoman survey register of Podolia (), and Te Crimean Khanate and Poland–Lithuania: international diplomacy on the European periphery (). Tijana Krstić is Associate Professor at the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest. Her research focuses on cultural and religious history of the earlyconversions modern Ottoman and broader Mediterranean Shemodern is the author of Contested to Islam: narratives of religious change inworld. the early Ottoman empire ().
Metin Kunt is Professor of History at Sabancı University, Istanbul. Most recently he co-edited, with Tülay Artan and Jeroen Duindam, Royal courts in dynastic states and empires ().
xi
— Contributors —
Rhoads Murphey is Reader in Ottoman Studies at the University of Birmingham. His current research interests include Ottoman law in theory and practice. He is the author of Exploring Ottoman sovereignty: tradition, image and practice in the Ottoman imperial household, 1400–1800 (). Oktay Özel is Assistant Professor at Bilkent University, Ankara. He studies social and demographic changes in rural Anatolia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and is currently engaged in research on Caucasian immigrants in the late Ottoman empire. He is the author of Dün Sancısı () and After the storm: the collapse of rural order in Anatolia (Amasya 1576–1643) (forthcoming). Ariel Salzmann is Associate Professor at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Her exploration of the Mediterranean and West Asian past employs comparative analysis and interdisciplinary methodologies. Her book ocqueville in the Ottoman empire: rival paths to the modern state () interrogates accepted theories of political development in light of empirical research on later Ottoman governance.
Jan Schmidt is Lecturer in Ottoman Studies at Leiden University. He is currently working on an edition of the Istanbul correspondence of Rudolf Kraus (–); his latest publication is a catalogue of the Turkish manuscripts in the John Rylands University Library in Manchester (). Tal Shuval teaches in the Department of History, Philosophy and Judaic Sciences in the Open University of Israel. He is currently researching the relations between Jews and Muslims in eighteenth-century Algiers and is the author of La ville d’Alger vers la fin du XVIIIe siècle () and several articles on Ottoman Algeria. Amy Singer is Professor of Ottoman Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her current research focuses on Ottoman public kitchens and the city of Edirne. Most recently, she is the author of Charity in Islamic societies () and the editor of Starting with food: culinary approaches to Ottoman history (). Derin Terzioğlu is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. She has published articles on aspects of Ottoman cultural, intellectual and religious history, and is currently working on a book on the transformation of Islamic piety in the early modern Ottoman empire. Baki Tezcan teaches history and religion at the University of California, Davis. Most dominant paradigms in() Ottoman Middle recently, he co-edited and and authored North African studies: a Beyond tribute to Rifa‘at Abou-el-Haj heEastern/ second Ottoman empire: political and social transformation in the early modern world ().
Ehud R. Toledano holds the University Chair for Ottoman and Turkish Studies in the Department of Middle East and African History at Tel Aviv University. His major publications include he Ottoman slave trade and its suppression, 1840–1890 (), State and society in mid-nineteenth-century Egypt (), Slavery and abolition in the xii
— Contributors —
Ottoman Middle East () and As if silent and absent: bonds of enslavement in the Islamic Middle East ().
Başak Tuğ is Assistant Professor of History at Istanbul Bilgi University. Her areas of research are gender history and theory, Islamic law, and the social history of violence and crime. Her PhD dissertation, ‘Politics of honor: the institutional and social frontiers of “illicit” sex in mid-eighteenth-century Ottoman Anatolia’ (), is currently being prepared for publication. is Professor of Islamicdemographic and Ottoman Studies the University of Michael Ursinus Heidelberg. He is currently researching trends in theatwestern Balkans on the basis of Ottoman fiscal documents and is the author of Grievance administration (şikayet) in an Ottoman province: the kaymakam of Rumelia’s ‘Record book of complaints’ of 1781–1788 ().
Nükhet Varlık is Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University. She is completing a book entitled Plague and empire in the early modern Mediterranean world: the Ottoman experience, 1347–1600 and editing a collection of articles entitled Plague and contagion in the Islamic Mediterranean. Charles L. Wilkins is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern History at Wake Forest University, North Carolina. His recent book Forging urban solidarities: Ottoman Aleppo, 1640–1700 () examines the effects of state-sponsored war-making on an important Ottoman provincial city and administrative centre. He is currently working on the long-term social and political adaptation of northern Syria to Ottoman rule, –. Stefan Winter is Professor of History at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) and has been Directeur d’études invité at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE). His current research focuses on tribal society and provincial administration in northern Syria in the Ottoman period. Christine Woodhead teaches Ottoman and Mediterranean history at the University of Durham. Her research and publications are on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman literary history and historiography. She is currently working on letter collections of members of the Ottoman ulema. Ali Yaycıoğlu is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. His research is on the transformation notables in the eighteenthof the andimperial early nineteenth-century system, provincialOttoman communities world.and regional
xiii
PREFACE
It has been a pleasure to edit this book, with regard both to its content and to its contributors. In terms of content, the volume is testimony to the enormous and very fruitful expansion of Ottomanist historical study in recent decades. To study Ottoman history as an undergraduate in the s was to enter a completely unfamiliar and challenging world, exciting in its very difference. However, from today’s perspective it is clear that the books and articles available then were few in number, and that most writing was on the relatively narrow military and political history of a dynastic state. This was not by choice but by default, as at that time there seemed to be little else. Broader social history topics were thought to be impossible to study due to lack of sources; Ottoman historical studies were largely in a world of their own. By contrast, however, the student of Ottoman history in the early twenty-first century enters a dynamic, ever-expanding subject area which now presents a wealth of sources, topics and publications unimaginable to a previous generation. This book began with a series of questions about the nature of ‘the Ottoman world’, its diverse societies and the ways in which these evolved over the period of the empire’s existence, both in their own terms and in terms of ‘being Ottoman’. Within these general parameters, contributors were invited to write about what they found most significant in their own subject areas. No attempt was made to provide a comprehensive coverage of topics, either chronologically or throughout the empire. Although several essays begin with a brief consideration of the relevant historiography, each develops according to its own priorities. The result is a stimulating variety of styles and approaches typical of current Ottomanist historical research. As befits itsdimensions. subject matter, book also represents a collaborative projectfor of their truly international I amthis most grateful to all my colleagues, not simply willingness to contribute to this volume and for producing such informative and thought-provoking essays, but particularly for their patience and good humour in the face of the delays which are almost inevitable with such a large-scale project, and of the demands of a pedantic editor. Specific thanks are due to Richard Stoneman, former senior editor at Routledge, who initiated this volume in as an essential part of the Routledge Worlds series by inviting me to edit it. I agreed to do so only after consultation with an inforxiv
— Preface —
mal advisory group of Ottomanist colleagues. All were encouraging, and most have contributed to the final volume. Thanks are due to all these advisors, but especially to Suraiya Faroqhi for her enthusiastic initial response, for recommending several contributors whose research was previously unknown to me, and for setting such a positive and inspiring example in her own work and particularly in the collaborative volumes which she herself has undertaken. I am also grateful for the helpful advice and remarkable patience shown by Routledge sub-editor Amy Davis-Poynter, and to the Routledge cartography department for redrawing some rather primitive maps. Philip Williamson has offered advice and encouragement at critical moments. In particular, without invaluable editorial or assistance of Clair Boyd, finalstages. text would not have been putthe together so efficiently so carefully in the last,the crucial While it is a truism to say that we learn by teaching, it is certainly the case that my own interests in Ottoman history would not have developed as broadly as they have without the stimulus of undergraduate teaching in the Department of History at the University of Durham, facilitated in turn by the unblinking willingness of the University Library to purchase everything I requested. Without the constant need to rethink, explain and justify to a sceptical audience, I would never have been able even to consider editing this book. I therefore hope that this volume will be as relevant and stimulating to non-Ottomanists, from students to established scholars, as it will be to Ottomanist historians, for both teaching and research purposes. This book has no dedication, except perhaps to previous generations of twentieth-century Ottomanist historians in various countries who persevered in their work despite discouragements such as archive closures, cultural negativity and political disincentives. Without their persistence and scholarship, current Ottomanist historians would not be where we are now. Christine Woodhead Durham June
xv
NOTE ON T URKISH TECHNICALITIES
AND
SPELLING As far as possible, in the interests of simplicity, all Ottoman words and phrases have been spelled using the modern Turkish alphabet. A few exceptions occur in essays dealing with the Ottoman Arab provinces. In such cases, a simplified Ottoman Arabic transcription is used. The following is a general guide to the pronunciation of those consonants and vowels used in Turkish which either do not appear in the English alphabet or which differ their is English pronunciation. Vowelsof are short. markedly The stress from in Turkish generally on the last syllable the usually word. pronounced c j as in jam ç ch as in church ğ has little sound of its own; usually lengthens the preceding vowel: e.g., Osmanoğlu = Osman-oh-lu = ‘the son(s) of Osman’ s s as in this (not as in these) ş sh as in ship a (i) short a as in apple (ii) long a as in father (in Arabic and Persian words) e e as in red ı [undotted i] as i in cousin i i as in pin o o as in otter öu eu French jeu u asasininput ü u as in French tu
PLACE NAMES Names of major cities and regions are usually given in their Anglicized form where these exist. Otherwise, place-name styles vary according to the region or era under discussion, with Ottoman and modern variants given where appropriate. xvi
— Note on urkish —
DATES All dates are given in (Common Era) reckoning. A double-year date such as – indicates often an srcinal hicri date in the Muslim calendar which spanned these two years.
REFERENCES References appear as Harvard-style endnotes at the end of each essay. Full bibliographic details are followed given in the composite bibliography at the end of the in book. The alphabetical order in the bibliography is that usually preferred Englishlanguage publications and which ignores the extra subtleties of Turkish letters. For this cultural insensitivity, I apologise to Turkish-speaking readers.
xvii
— Contributors —
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xix
— Contributors —
Black Sea Istanbul Derbend
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Map The eastern and southern Ottoman world
xx
INTRODUCTION
Christine Woodhead
W
as there such a thing as an ‘Ottoman world’? Among the numerous and varied answers there must be to this question, three stand out for the purposes of this book. The first and most essential is the obvious territorial definition. The Ottoman empire as a political entity comprised most of the present Middle East (with the principal exception of Iran), North Africa and South-Eastern Europe. For over years, until its disintegration during the First World War, it encompassed a diverse range of ethnic, religious and linguistic communities with varying political and cultural backgrounds. Further questions on the nature of the ‘Ottoman world’ now follow. For instance, Ottoman authority might have been established largely by military conquest, but how was it maintained for so long over such distances and so many disparate societies? How did provincial regions relate to the imperial centre and what role was played in this by local elites? How did the inhabitants of major cities such as Cairo or Damascus adjust to Ottoman rule, or did it adjust to them? What produced the consensus which supported the empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? To what degree did subject peoples see themselves as part of a larger political and economic whole? What did it mean in practice, for ordinary people, to be part of an ‘Ottoman world’? Traditional study of the Ottoman empire based upon narrative sources inevitably focused on the dynasty in Istanbul, its military undertakings and its centralized administration. This tended towards a relatively narrow, government-centred assessment of the empire’s ‘rise and decline’, easily correlated with more, and generally less, competent sultans. Echoes of this easy schematic approach, which tied the health of the empire as a whole to dynastic and governmental stability, still linger in general history textbooks, to government, the despair oftraditional most Ottomanist historians. its strong focus on Istanbul-centred historiography didGiven not raise such questions about how the wider state functioned or about the lives and outlook of Ottoman people. A second answer to the initial question is therefore to consider the nature of the societies which came under Ottoman rule, and to ask whether the latter had sufficient influence on social, political, economic or cultural developments across the empire so as to produce some definable degree or quality of ‘Ottoman-ness’ which was more
— Christine Woodhead —
than simply acceptance of the sultan’s government. However, this approach has been neither popular nor, until relatively recently, possible. Unlike the British, French or Spanish empires, the Ottoman empire did not bequeath to its successor states a world language or a widespread and lasting change of religious faith. Most of the constituent parts into which the empire dissolved in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could easily be portrayed in nationalist terms as having retained their integrity despite Ottoman rule, whether the latter was considered as irrelevant or oppressive, or both. The resulting historiographical distortions have been as difficult to overcome as has the decline paradigm.1 In conjunction with thisapproach, deeper analysis of the world, those a third answer would take a still broader expanding the Ottoman term to include areas and political entities, neighbouring and distant – from Venice, to England, to Diu in India and Atjeh on Sumatra, from Poland to Central Asia and the Sudan – with which Ottomans and their state had diplomatic, commercial or cultural relations. Here, ‘the Ottoman world’ is the extended world in which Ottomans operated, with the emphasis on trade, communication and comparable lifestyles, rather than on taxation and militarized organization. The old view that the Ottomans had little interest in the non-Muslim world except as a site of potential conquest is no longer tenable. Suraiya Faroqhi’s study of the interactions of Ottoman officials and ordinary individuals in the pre-modern era with non-Ottoman merchants, captives, travellers and pilgrims demonstrates a world or mind generally no more closed than that of their European counterparts.2 Several Ottomanist historians have also countered the persistent belief that the Ottomans were not interested in trade, a view which stemmed from overemphasis on the activities of western merchants in the eastern Mediterranean. Not only was the Ottoman-Muslim world sufficiently large to constitute in itself a ‘world economy’; its preferred routes for commercial expansion extended not westwards into Europe and across the Atlantic, but eastwards through the Indian Ocean and, during the sixteenth century, southwards down the east coast of Africa.3 This volume is concerned mainly with the second of these three understandings of the ‘Ottoman world’, with added perspectives offered by the third. It does not present this world through the eyes of the Istanbul-based Ottoman elite, as used to be the case in older works which relied primarily on official chronicles and government documents. To study of these sources is now added extensive use of judicial court registers, endowment deeds and personal records relating to all levels of Ottoman society, male and female, rich and poor, central and provincial, which enables historians to present a very different picture. In this respect the historian who, as a catalyst, has probably had the greatest influence upon the development of Ottoman historical studies in the past half century is Fernand belief that ‘the. Turkish Mediterranean livedand andgeneral breathed with the sameBraudel. rhythmsHis as the Christian . . with identical problems trends’ challenged Turkish historians to delve further into the Ottoman archives, to present their findings to an increasingly interested outside audience and, ultimately, to engage in social-science-based comparative research.4 In recent decades such research has expanded Ottoman studies enormously in many directions. It has, for instance, emphasized the essential pragmatism of the Ottoman administration and shown the degree to which efficiency was dependent upon willing co-operation at local level. Islanders on Limnos, Palestinian peasants and nomadic tribal leaders all had the potential subtly
— Introduction —
to destabilize Ottoman rule. In contrast to the traditional view of tightly run central institutions imposing their systems on subject peoples, we see that, as often as not, the government had to negotiate constantly in order to succeed in its aims. Braudel’s image of Philip II of Spain as the spider at the centre of a huge imperial web can also apply in modified form to the Ottoman case, certainly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. If the spider is the central administration in Istanbul, the threads of its web extend along communication routes and are anchored securely only where they intersect, in the major towns and cities which were centres of Ottoman provincial administration. The empty spaces between the threads represent the rural, desert, mountainous or otherwise sparsely populated areas where degrees of Ottoman authority varied considerably. A greater distance between urban administrative centres – the larger the gaps in the web – generally meant a less visible Ottoman presence. The spider’s web analogy can be taken further: its adaptability, flexibility and relative ease of repair represent one aspect, its essential ‘light touch’ a second. Most of these elements can generally be found in the immediate post-conquest stages of Ottoman administration in any given area. The importance given by the Ottomans to settlement policies and to the development of new markets and towns, particularly in the Balkans during the fifteenth century, also supports the appropriateness of the web analogy. To the old ivew that the Ottoman empire was a military state organized for and living off the poils s of war, and to the more recent characterization of it as an agrarian empire funded by agricultural revenues, we must add the political and economic significance of urban centres and note the importance to the central government of establishing strong working relationships with the leaders of urban society, whoever they might be. PHASES OF OTTOMAN HISTORY
Considering how best to divide the study of Ottoman history into meaningful periods can be a useful way to reassess dominant preconceptions. With no dynastic change for over years, there is no obvious point of disruption at which to stop and take stock. Ottoman historiography, with its considerable, and natural, emphasis upon institutional continuity, contributes significantly to the difficulty of identifying significant change. Traditional ‘rise and decline’ views suggested two major periodizations. The first, favoured by European historians, based on external affairs and emphasizing the military aspect of the Ottoman empire, generally took the Treaty of Karlowitz in and the Ottoman loss of Hungary as the turning point. The second, taking its cue from early seventeenth-century Ottoman ‘reform’ literature, gave priority to political developments, placing the beginning of ‘decline’ at some time in the later sixteenth century, either with the death of Süleyman in or with the onset of ‘corruption’ 5
in In thecontrast reign oftohis grandson Murad III interpretations, (–). these centrally focused one broad, empire-wide, socioeconomic perspective suggests a three-stage Ottoman empire. The middle stage begins around , with the establishment of the Ottoman province of Hungary at the end of a thirty-year period of spectacular territorial expansion. Administrative reorganization, commercial prosperity and the maintenance of a largely self-sustaining Ottoman world economy characterize this ‘stable state’ second period. Only from around the s, due to a change in the dynamics of trade with Europe and ominous defeat in the war of – against Russia, does the empire move into a final third stage.6
— Christine Woodhead —
Another possibility is to identify a turning point in Ottoman history in –, with the incorporation into the empire of Syria, Egypt and the Hijaz. This point of division not only acknowledges the obvious administrative and commercial developments associated with the sudden doubling in size of the empire, but also emphasizes religious, legal and cultural aspects of Ottoman existence. Leaving aside the practicalities of rule over such extended territory, the question here is how the Ottomans – the johnnys-come-lately in their ex-Byzantine base, of initially rather suspect faith – could make themselves acceptable as rulers to long-established Muslim societies in the former Mamluk empire. Ottoman adoption of the role of protector of the pilgrimage routes to Mecca and of the Holy Cities themselves also coincided with the challenge for control of Anatolia posed during the sixteenth century by the Shiite state of Safavid Iran. An increasing ‘Sunnitization’ of the state resulted. Other long-view periodizations of Ottoman history will emphasize different perspectives, such as fiscal/financial, architectural, literary, and the history of communications or of regional/provincial developments. However, dominant preconceptions are equally well undermined by the determined focus of several historians on a specific problem, as shown in the great gazi debate of the s and s.7 Was early Ottoman expansion driven by the desire for holy war (gaza, fought by gazis, holy warriors), by the restlessness of its nomadic, tribal following, by the desire for economic advantage through ever-extending control of trade routes, by the need to defend itself against other, very similar Turkish groups, or by simple opportunism? So much appeared to hinge on correct understanding of this early phase – in Colin Imber’s term, the ‘black hole’ in Ottoman history – which was made all the more tantalizing because of the shortage of reliable contemporary sources. A debate of similar significance and intensity has centred on the nature of the celali uprisings of the s and early s. Were these essentially peasant movements caused by socio-economic push factors such as population pressure, poor harvests and over-taxation, or were they the result more of political pull factors such as recruitment of armed peasants as mercenary troops and the possibility of enhanced social status and/or financial opportunity in employment off the land? What role was played by dissatisfied Ottoman officials and former military men, and by the government itself? Crucially, why was the celali phenomenon confined largely to Anatolia? The celali phenomenon contributed to a period of crisis in Ottoman administration and ideology which arose from an accumulation of several factors. In the early imperial era, the Ottomans had been able to develop their administration by adopting and adapting procedures and personnel which they found in situ in newly conquered areas. Much Ottoman administrative procedure in the Balkans, for instance, was adapted from previous Byzantine fief-holding and taxation practices. Similarly, successful administration of the former Mamluk regions of Syria anditsEgypt afterand relied on taking over much of the previous system, together with middle lower-ranking Mamluk officials. However, by around , as Ottoman territorial expansion largely ceased, challenges for government were no longer those of incorporating new regions but of solving new problems which arose internally and for which there were no precedents, models or experienced practitioners already in existence. Such new problems included not only the socio-economic disruption caused by the celali uprisings, but also changes in military technology which required alteration in the balance between cavalry and infantry, and hence different recruitment patterns and methods of
— Introduction —
payment. They included unprecedented financial difficulties compounded by a per cent devaluation in the Ottoman silver currency in the mid-s and by the need to alter methods of tax assessment and collection. They also included increased competition for appointment in both administrative and judicial professions, and the increasing prominence of clientage networks and associated accusations of corruption. The response to such problems could no longer be to adopt and adapt existing procedures: new solutions had to be devised. Hence, while the seventeenth century is certainly a period of ‘crisis and change’, it is also a period of ‘trial and error’, in working out these new approaches. Some of these worked, and some did not. From this resulted the apparent chaos and seeming lack of direction which for long made the seventeenth century the most difficult and least popular era of Ottoman history to study. Now, however, as is evident in many of the essays in this volume and encapsulated recently in Baki Tezcan’s notion of a ‘second Ottoman empire’ from around , Ottomanist historians have largely jettisoned the notion of a post- ‘decline’ and are identifying instead significant elements of continuity and development. One of these elements, the role of provincial elites throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, constitutes a third area of major debate and reassessment by historians.8 As long as an efficient, centralized system of government was regarded as the key to Ottoman success in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, then any kind of later decentralization tended to be viewed negatively. Thus the ayan (‘local notables’, particularly those with political or military influence) were seen to pose an increasing challenge to Ottoman authority. However, treating both the Ottoman chronicle record and later nationalist histories with due care, historians now view provincial elites of various kinds as permanent and essential elements within Ottoman society, without whose co-operation the government would have had difficulty functioning at virtually any period. If early Ottoman rule in the Balkans was facilitated by the appointment of local Christian lords as timar holders, later Ottoman rule in most provincial areas, both urban and rural, was also facilitated by the co-option of local ayan as tax collectors, local officials and recruitment officers. STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK
This book began with a question about the nature – even the existence – of an ‘Ottoman world’. It is not designed to be an introduction to, or a comprehensive survey of, Ottoman history. For these the reader should turn to the Cambridge history of Turkey and to Caroline Finkel’s analytical narrative Osman’s dream.9 Nor is this a book about sultans, Janissaries and grand vezirs as such, about military campaigns, or about foreign or domestic policy emanating from Istanbul. Rather, it is about the constants and givens of Ottoman society, aboutthis. the It definition and about the forces which supported and challenged is about of the‘Ottoman’, limits of Ottoman reach, about significant factors influencing the lives of ordinary people in the empire, and about how the nature of the Ottoman world appeared in the eighteenth century. It addresses aspects of the social, and to some extent the socio-ideological, composition of a major pre-modern empire, offering a combination of broad synthesis and detailed investigation intended both to be informative and to raise points for future debate. The volume contains thirty essays arranged in five sections, each of which presents a specific aspect of the larger question. The essays in Part I address fundamental aspects
— Christine Woodhead —
of Ottoman society which were either constantly present throughout the empire’s history or which helped lay the foundations for the later empire. Sufism and pious endowments were cornerstones of everyday life for Ottoman Muslims, with endowments such as soup kitchens also open to non-Muslims. The almost ubiquitous presence of nomadic groups may have made settled farmers uneasy and the lives of tax collectors more difficult, but, without their expertise in sheep and camel-raising, meat would have been in short supply for everyone and commercial goods brought by overland caravans would have been more difficult to obtain. Above all, the essays in this section emphasize the importance always attached by the Ottomans to a sound economy and to a well-regulated and fair legal basis to society. Part II addresses the crucial question of what or who was srcinally meant by the term ‘Ottoman’. Derived from the simple descriptor Osmanlı, ‘the followers or household of Osman’, ‘Ottoman’ was a dynastic term, comparable to Habsburg or Romanov, used to denote a royal household, which became an imperial government. On account of the practice of recruiting slave troops and administrators from nonMuslim peoples, and the attractions of Ottoman service to non-Turkish volunteers, at no stage – even in the fourteenth century – was the Ottoman ruling group completely Turkish ethnically.10 Despite the seeming interchangeability of ‘Ottoman’ and ‘Turk’ in some types of historical writing, these terms were never synonymous. Mostly, they denoted two completely different layers of society. Understanding how the ‘Ottoman’ amalgam of sultan and servitors developed, and how it was constantly evolving and expanding, both politically and culturally, is one of the keys to understanding the nature and longevity of the empire. This section of the book contains essays on the creation and projection of an Ottoman identity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and how the ‘us and them’ division was being constantly renegotiated. The development of an Ottoman rhetoric of universal sovereignty was almost inevitable in the sixteenth century, and was paralleled by the comparable claims in western Europe of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. In practice, the pragmatism and accommodation of local interests which were hallmarks of Ottoman government everywhere were particularly so in frontier regions. Given that the Ottomans did not inherit a ready-made, clearly defined state, it is worth noting that virtually all areas under Ottoman rule would have qualified at some stage as frontier regions, to be incorporated gradually into the empire.11 Three of the essays in Part III deal with active, open frontiers almost equidistant from Istanbul to the west, north and east, each with its own variation of Ottoman control. Further frontiers in Algiers and Yemen differed in the degree of interest and authority of the central government. In both regions these receded noticeably during the seventeenth century, when the costs and difficulties of maintaining an Ottoman presence began to outweigh the returns. Essaysinonwestern the spread of plague and oncontinuing eighteenth-century merchant communities Europe emphasize OttomanOttoman connections, both indirect and direct, beyond these frontiers. Part IV builds upon the social constants considered in Part I by considering in greater detail specific aspects common to the daily life of large numbers of ordinary people, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Domestic slavery and household formation, guild organization, non-Muslim courts, literacy levels, women’s rights to divorce, and how inhabitants of Ottoman cities, men and women, might have spent their leisure time are all topics which not long ago it would have been thought difficult, if not
— Introduction —
impossible, to study seriously in an Ottoman context. There is now a much broader perspective in which to set the observations of European travellers on Ottoman society. Two major social groups, merchants and scholars, are under-represented in this volume, partly though not entirely because the primary focus of interest in these groups lies outside its scope. As mentioned above, views on the extent, independence and commercial significance of Ottoman trade have been revised considerably in recent years. With regard to scholars, contemporary Ottoman biographical dictionaries have always made possible prosopographical studies of the Istanbul-based ulema. Recent studies especially of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Syrian scholars will surely prompt a12significant re-evaluation of our understanding of the pre-modern scholarly outlook. It could also be said that there is insufficient attention given here to nonMuslim Ottoman communities. While at one level this is true, at another it could be argued that, as non-Muslims are discussed in several of the essays simply as part of Ottoman society generally, this is an appropriate reflection of how, in the pre-modern period, they were, on the whole, perceived. Finally, the essays in Part V broaden the perspective once again to consider imperial cohesion and the crucial question of to what extent provincial elites and societies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries considered themselves ‘Ottoman’. In particular, Ehud Toledano’s concluding assessment of the ‘localization’ of Ottoman elites and the ‘Ottomanization’ of local elites in the Ottoman Arab world emphasizes the continuing flexibility of Ottoman societies in their relationship to the imperial centre. The chronological period covered by this volume ends for the most part in the early nineteenth century, thus omitting the final century of Ottoman history. In this sense it perhaps follows the periodization which takes the reign of Selim III (–) as a major turning point in Ottoman history, in terms both of this sultan’s nizam-i cedid (‘new order’) reform programme and of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in . However, the rationale for ending here is not based strictly on political or foreign policy markers. The Ottoman nineteenth century has been studied intensively from many different angles, both for its own sake and as a precursor to the emergence of the modern Turkish republic.13 The aim of this volume is to draw attention to recent scholarship on the early and middle periods of the empire, those eras which are more distant from us in time and which appear more alien in nature, on which some of the more tenacious scholarly views have been held, and where now the most exciting new research is to be found. NOTES
Hathaway : , on the tendency among Arab nationalist historians to view Ottoman rule as at best ‘a demoralizing prelude’ to nineteenth-century western-inspired reforms. Faroqhi . Faroqhi : –; Eldem : . –; Hanna ; Casale . Braudel : I, preface; see also Inalcık . But see Tezcan for a much broader perspective on ‘the second Ottoman empire’. Faroqhi : esp. –. Summarized and extended in Lowry a. On historiographical approaches, see Khoury . Three of the four projected volumes of the Cambridge history are currently available: Fleet (vol. ); Faroqhi (vol. ); Kasaba (vol. ).
— Christine Woodhead — See e.g., Lowry a. . For the classic account of Ottoman methods of incorporation in the early period, see Inalcık . For archaeological approaches to Ottoman frontier history, see Peacock . On the Ottoman ulema, see Zilfi , ; on seventeenth-/eighteenth-century Arab thought, see e.g., El-Rouayheb , ; Akkach , b. E.g., the essays in Kasaba . See also Ehud Toledano’s discussion of developments in Ottoman histiography, chapter 30, pp. 455–6, 457–9, in this volume.
PART I
FOUNDATIONS
CHAPTER ONE
NOMADS AND TR IBES I N THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Reşat Kasaba
ORIGINS
The territories of the Ottoman empire intersected with what geographers refer to as the ‘sub-Arctic nomadic zone’, which extended from the Mediterranean littoral, through the Anatolian peninsula and the Iranian plateau, on to the mountains of Central Asia. For millennia, tens of thousands of tribes moved constantly across this belt of high mountains and dry steppes and deserts. Starting in the eleventh century, Turkic and Mongolian tribes arrived in Anatolia and eastern Mediterranean lands. They became integrated the indigenous patterns of circulation and altered forever the social and political into make-up and the history of these regions. As they passed through these lands, these tribes interacted with local communities; some melded into local relations and networks and abandoned their journey, while others continued to move. Superimposition of the long-distance migrations onto local structures and movements created a highly fluid social environment throughout this territory. Especially in Anatolia, between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries it became difficult to distinguish between the arriving, staying, or departing tribes, let alone between sedentary and nomadic communities. This was the context within which the Ottoman empire grew to become a world empire after the thirteenth century. The integration of the goat- and sheep-herding Türkmen communities of the Anatolian peninsula and the camel-raising Bedouin and Arab tribes of North Africa and the Middle East created a fluid and heterogeneous society that defied simple characterization in ethnic, religious or administrative terms. At least initially, the Ottomans had neither the means nor the intention to settle permanently or discipline nomadic tribes. Instead, classifying tribes in their existing state appeared to be a more pragmatic approach. As their empire grew quickly in western Anatolia and the Balkans, the Ottomans continued to balance their interest in strengthening the empire’s administrative structure and its peasant base with the obvious need to define a clear place for nomads within Ottoman rural society. To this end, they developed special laws to monitor the activities of tribes and recorded tribal affairs separately in special documents. 1 Maintaining control over nomadic tribal communities was by no means an easy task. For one thing, the area across which the tribes moved could be quite large. One clan could
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spend summers at the source of the Euphrates in the interior of eastern Anatolia and then move south to the Syrian desert for the winter, a distance of over miles.2 Some of the tribes were huge, with as many as , to , individuals and sometimes several hundred thousand sheep and camels.3 Given that Ottoman law recognized sheep as constituting a herd, and that the state used this as the unit of accounting in assessing the liabilities of tribes, these were indeed wealthy and formidable units. The Ottomans not only kept the existing patterns of tribal migration intact, but they also encouraged mobility, making this an even larger part of the make-up of Ottoman society. For example, sedentary and nomadic communities were forced by the state tonewly moveconquered across longareas. distances, either a method of punishment as a way of settling It should be as noted, however, that forcefulorrelocation of nomadic tribes for punitive or strategic reasons did not automatically entitle them to land, since they were not necessarily encouraged or expected to adopt sedentary farming in their new places.4 Instead, in line with established practices in their places of srcin, these communities were allocated grazing lands, since it was assumed that they would continue their pastoral nomadism in the new regions. ADM IN IS TR AT ION
In administrative parlance, Ottoman officials referred to tribes as aşiret. In order to facilitate governance and taxation, they grouped the tribes in eastern Anatolia, Iraq, Syria, and further east in the Arab provinces as Türkmen, Kurds, Arabs or Bedouin. Those who had moved west of the Kızılırmak River in Anatolia and into the Balkans, and had increasingly engaged in settled agriculture and become semi-nomads ( yarıgöçebe or konar-göçer), were referred to as yürüks.5 Of the main groupings, those in the east were closer to being absolute nomads than their counterparts in the west. The largest administrative units the Ottomans recognized among the Kurds and Türkmens were il and ulus.6 The two largest of these were the Boz Ulus, consisting largely but not exclusively of Türkmens, and Kara Ulus, consisting largely, but not exclusively, of Kurds.7 Ulus confederations were divided into smaller groups, in descending order, as boy (sometimes taife), cemaat and kabile. Yürüks, on the other hand, were spun off from Türkmen kabiles and were not organized in the larger units of boy, il or ulus. Instead, they were classified and registered as kabiles and cemaats, mostly on the basis of their tax and other obligations or of the places where they circulated.8 For the most part, who was included in the yürük and Türkmen formations ulus, il, boy, cemaat or kabile was determined endogenously, with little influence from outside. These groups were given names and were recognized by the Ottoman administration only after they had already taken shape through their own internal dynamics. The units which the Ottomans recognized for the purposes administering couldtribal be very large yet territorially loose. In the sixteenth century, of there were more than separate tribes in various sizes registered as part of the Boz Ulus confederacy, whose population then is estimated to have been more than , tents with million sheep. Their seasonal migrations covered an area extending from Mardin in south-eastern Anatolia all the way to Iran and Georgia.9 In addition to recognizing the existing groupings and regrouping them under new labels, the Ottoman government appointed high-ranking officers to administer the affairs of tribal communities and to assess and collect their taxes. Being at least partially
— Nomads and tribes in the Ottoman empire —
mobile, tribes were not subject to the authority of the sancak beyi (district governor). Typically, ulus units were governed by voyvodas, and cemaats by kethüdas, whereas tribes who were registered into the army were supervised by seraskers. Like other administrative units in the empire, each confederation of tribes was also assigned a kadı (judge), who served as the direct representative of the central government and also adjudicated in intra- and intertribal matters. As a further indication of the government’s willingness to accommodate these communities, these kadıs would sometimes accompany the tribes as the latter went through their seasonal cycles of migration.10 Even though the titles of the officials who were in charge of tribes and those who were responsible for peasant households identical, there important variations in the way in which theand twovillages sets ofwere administrators were were appointed. Perhaps more importantly, while the central organization of the Ottoman administration and its application in sedentary rural areas were highly centralized and hierarchical, there was a strong element of bottom-up initiative and indigenous identification which shaped the nature of Ottoman administration in tribal areas. Of the indigenous tribes which the Ottomans came to dominate, the Kurdish communities constitute a special category. They were one of the largest ethnically distinct and predominantly Muslim communities whose presence in this part of the world long predated the Ottoman empire. The Ottomans were aware of the local power of this community and their policies contributed to the long-term survival of the Kurds as a distinct people. They used a policy of accommodation sometimes referred to as istimalet, which consisted of making generous concessions to win over the Kurds, while helping consolidate the power of local chiefs.11 This was the same policy that was used towards Christian communities in western Anatolia and the Balkans in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.12 In general, Ottomans favoured Sunni Kurds over their Alevi counterparts. Most of the favours and preferential treatment were directed at them. Sunni Kurds were also encouraged to form a buffer against Iran and as an ally in lengthy struggles with the local Shi’i communities (Kurdish and otherwise), some of whom supported the Iranian rulers. Some Kurdish chiefs took advantage of these conditions and used their ties with the Ottoman government to amass fortunes and extensive power in eastern Anatolia. So powerful did some of these chieftains become that they were able to influence Ottoman policies and affect the shape of military campaigns in their areas.13 Murad IV (–) issued a series of imperial orders in and recognizing the power of the Kurdish chiefs, reinforcing the hereditary nature of Kurdish tribal chiefdom, and prohibiting local military commanders and governors from harassing the Kurdish tribes. Generally, nomadic tribes were exempted from many of the taxes and dues that werethem, leviedthe ontax most peasant Evenup with the lighter special taxes were imposed on burden onhouseholds. nomads ended being than that the obligations of sedentary farmers. The most commonly imposed tax on all pastoral nomads was adet-i agnam (sheep tax), which was determined on the basis of the size and quality of the herds owned by a particular tribe or confederation of tribes. Nomads were also required to pay a series of fees for their grazing lands and pastures, as well as special dues if they harmed or lost their own or other people’s animals or slaves. Along with the rest of the peasants, nomads also had to pay marriage tax (resm-i arus or gerdek akçesi). As was the general practice, most of these taxes were assessed and the obliga
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tion of nomads was determined by taking into consideration whether the payer was well off and also whether he was single, married, living with his parents or living alone.14 Naturally, nomads were aware of their special status, and they used it in raising complaints against officials who sought to impose additional dues on them. In such complaints they insisted that they were not tax-paying subjects ( reaya) but had special status because of the specific services they were performing for the sultan. 15 Here, the special status and power of the tribal leaders became particularly important, since they played an important role in negotiating with the government and affecting the outcome of such complaints. NOMADS IN OTTOMAN STATE AND SOCIETY
While the Ottoman land system was premised on the existence and preservation of peasant households (çift-hane), this same system also preserved and incorporated the large number of nomadic tribes and regulated their interaction with sedentary farmers. In Braudel’s words, far from being a residual category that was simply contained, transhumance was ‘institutionalized in the Ottoman Empire and was protected by the state with special safeguards, rules, and privileges’.16 Numerous laws and regulations were issued by Ottoman officials to regulate the migratory routes of nomads and to guarantee their livelihood and safety.17 Even the laws protecting the rights of peasants against the incursions of nomads and their animals did not leave the nomadic population without any safeguards. In many regions, there were specially designated paths along which the tribes were expected to herd their animals, but the peasants were also required to mark their lands clearly and to build fences around them if these lands were on the migratory routes of a tribe. Before the eighteenth century, the settlement activities promoted and enforced by the Ottoman government were limited in focus and purpose. Most typically, they were carried out in order to (re)populate newly conquered areas in the Balkans and to enhance security in frontier zones. Even then, tribes were not necessarily required to abandon nomadism entirely. Otherwise, the only other large-scale resettlement carried out before the eighteenth century targeted not the nomads but the peasants who had fled in the face of the celali uprisings in the seventeenth century.18 Official tolerance towards tribes was rooted in the fact that pastoral nomadism had become integral to the organization of the Ottoman empire in a number of different ways. For one thing, land was relatively plentiful. This meant that in most regions, especially in parts of western Anatolia, there was a shortage of labour, which became particularly pronounced during harvest time. Migrant labour belonging to various nomadic tribes moved over long distances to participate in various harvest activities in the west.Bursa Workers fromroutinely northern took and eastern Anatolia be wages, found in and around and coming Izmir. They advantage of thecould higher which could go up by as much as three times their normal rates during harvest season. Their participation in harvest and other economic activities meant that most of the time these tribes were functioning as transhumant communities in the west. Only part of a tribe would move between the lowlands and the mountain pastures, while the rest became involved in sedentary activities, including farming. Even those who moved were not necessarily cut off from farming completely as they would incorporate it into their seasonal migration. In the course of their migration they would cultivate the
— Nomads and tribes in the Ottoman empire —
abandoned or unclaimed lands (which could be plenty) that they encountered or work as sharecroppers or seasonal labourers on lands cultivated by peasants in their regions. The existence of these extensive relationships shows that the underlying system of settled agriculture was strong and that there was division of labour between this sector and the migrating groups and individuals. The interchange between villages and migrants could take even more complex forms. For example, the collective ownership of land, called musha’, that prevailed in some of the Arab provinces, in particular in western Syria, did not grant permanent ownership or possession to any single household that was part of this system. Instead, individual parcels who weremight periodically redistributed among seasonal migrants be residing in the village. In the this households, way, musha’including provided the migrants with another means of entry into local economic networks.19 This shows that, despite appearances, neither migration in rural areas nor the interaction of nomads with local economy was random. The central government was aware of the systematic nature of these relations and made sure to tax the nomads separately for any settled farming in which they might be participating. In addition to farming, nomads took part in manufacturing activities, such as carpet weaving, rug making and other textiles.20 For example, around Jerusalem, both the settled peasants and nomads were engaged in the production of soap in the seventeenth century, and the two competed with each other to obtain raw materials such as alkaline ash, which was a key ingredient.21 Some of the key export items such as natural dyes and timber were gathered from the interior of Anatolia by nomads and sold to merchants on major trade routes.22 Often, nomadic tribes were the sole purveyors of animals such as camels, donkeys, mules and horses, which were the main means of transportation for civilian and military purposes. We should note, for example, that nomadic tribes were the sole suppliers of the more than , camels and as many mules that the Ottoman army required on its campaigns. Their control of the empire’s large and small animal stock meant that nomads were indispensable for the operation of regional and imperial networks of trade. Also, the fact that they specialized in raising sheep made transhumant nomads the main suppliers of meat in the empire. In this context it is important to point out the mutual dependence that characterized the relations between nomads and the settled villagers and townspeople. Just as strongly as the sedentary groups, nomads were dependent on the commercial nexus that linked them to other groups on their paths. They had to have access to regional markets in order to obtain a wide variety of necessities, including food items, construction materials, horseshoes, and even some of their weapons. Such exchanges were a regular part of the economies of various regions of the Ottoman empire. 23 Nomads also provided some very important services in the integration and organization be of found the empire on provinces a macro-level. For example, the so-called drivers could in most of Anatolia, sometimes moving Arab with camel their animals across a large swathe of territory extending from the Dardanelles to Adana in the south.24 Nomads facilitated the flow of goods and resources; they made it possible for the Ottoman troops to move quickly across long distances, and they herded, gathered, grew or manufactured valuable goods of consumption and trade. In times of famine and other natural or man-made disasters, the Ottoman government relied on the services of nomadic tribes to move large quantities of grains and other foodstuffs and necessities to disaster regions.25 Nomads were also employed in state-owned mines,
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and in the construction of roads, bridges, forts and castles, as well as in the guarding and protection of such structures.26 Nomadic tribes made an equally significant contribution to the military organization and success of the Ottoman empire in the early part of its history. It was by relying on intrinsically mobile groups such as nomads, and unattached single men, that the Ottoman government could mobilize large numbers of troops without threatening the integrity and viability of the peasant economy. In fact, so central were their military activities that, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Ottoman government registered many of the yürük communities as military companies (müsellem) ready to 27
be called to the the front in times did of war provide support services in war peace. In some instances Ottomans not or even have to channel or harness theormovements of local tribes but simply followed them. This was the case with the , nomads who in the fourteenth century spontaneously moved and settled in the Balkans, where they found willing partners among the semi-nomadic communities of Vlachs and Albanians.28 On a broader scale and for a longer period, tribal groups were assigned the task of guarding fortresses in the frontiers, bridges and major highways, all of which were crucial in military campaigns as well as in peace time. In the Arab provinces the Bedouin were paid special fees by the government so that they would provide some of these services and, in particular, to keep pilgrimage routes open and secure.29 Not surprisingly, the importance and variety of the activities in which nomads were involved and the crucial role the chiefs played in mobilizing their followers made some of these leaders extremely wealthy, powerful and highly autonomous. One historian estimates that ‘even the poorest herdsman could be placed in the same category as a peasant cultivating a full çift of – dönüms or – acres of land’. In , two confederations in eastern Anatolia had become so wealthy that they paid million akçe in taxes to the central government.30 NOMADISM AS A M EANS OF RESISTANCE AGAINST THE STATE
Like all itinerant groups in history, nomadic tribes in the Ottoman empire had the option of using their mobility as a weapon. When they lacked the means to organize a rebellion, they simply abandoned their designated pastures and paths of circulation, left the towns where they were settled, and hid in the mountains or the countryside to avoid the authorities.31 Alternatively, they would join other unemployed youth or soldiers who had deserted or were discharged from the army, and together they would roam the countryside, raid and rob villagers and merchant caravans. The end of the sixteenth century was one such period of upheaval in the Ottoman empire, which overlaps a Mediterranean-wide increase in mountains’. banditry, described by Braudel as ‘an 32 explosionwith of liberation from the Mediterranean The Ottoman response to such actions was typically punitive, involving the forced displacement of the individuals and tribes involved. But even such confrontations did not necessarily imply a categorical opposition to nomadism on the part of the central government, but rather a more focused response to ideological, political and/or foreign pressures. In any event, tribes which had been forced to relocate as punishment did not necessarily stay in the places to which they were sent, but moved back and
— Nomads and tribes in the Ottoman empire —
forth between their places of srcin and their new areas of settlement. For example, in western Anatolia, the region around Saruhan, which was a very important source of emigration to the Balkans from an early period, never completely lost its nomads but continued to provide one of the end points in the back and forth movement of migrants and nomads.33 Hence, in most instances, in the early part of the empire’s history, pressuring nomads had the effect of spreading nomadism into an even larger part of the empire, a process characterized by one author as ‘reseeding of nomadism’ across the Ottoman territories.34 WAV ES OF SED EN TA RIZAT ION The eighteenth century
From the late seventeenth century, the Ottoman empire responded to the new world of expanding trade networks and territorial states by initiating a series of measures intended to improve the empire’s security. These measures can be interpreted as the first steps towards creating a functionally differentiated state structure that constantly sought to improve its capacity to rule over an unruly and highly mobile society. A key component of this shift in priorities was the growing interest on the part of Ottoman officials to count, register and, ultimately, settle the nomadic and other itinerant groups within the borders of the empire. It was becoming clear that, in the new modern world, the territorial and political uncertainty that came with nomads and migrants was no longer an asset. In fact, such fluidity was fast becoming a liability. The turning point in the empire’s relations with nomadic tribes and other mobile groups came in during the short grand vezirate of Köprülü Fazil Mustafa Paşa, when the first set of comprehensive orders to settle nomadic tribes were issued. These were followed in with another series of directives that aimed to register as many of the nomadic tribes as possible.35 In addition to monitoring the movements of these communities, the registration drive helped create specially designated companies who were then drafted into the army.36 The urgent need to reinforce the army during the war of the Holy League in Hungary (–) was an important factor which informed these particular measures. However, the policy of settling nomads did not end there. The following two centuries of the empire’s history witnessed a steady stream of orders and decrees dealing with various problems related to nomadic populations, migrants and refugees and their settlement. These orders and the underlying policy that shaped them became clearer and better focused as time went on. An important aspect new waveand of quantitative centralizationexpansion in the seventeenth eighteenth centuries wasofthethequalitative in the kindand of information the Ottoman government sought. This implied a new approach to rule, and expansion of the powers of the civilian officials.37 As part of this new development, almost as soon as the settlement decrees began to be issued, a new Office of Settlements (iskan dairesi) was established in the palace, and in all such initiatives were placed under its authority.38 During the following two centuries, the offices that focused on the settlement of tribes and refugees expanded, and their powers
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multiplied. This subtle shift of power towards civilian authorities created a deep sense of unease among the military and led to a series of revolts in the eighteenth century. Cognizant of established practices and expectations, and being aware of the fact that the very mobility of the tribes gave them an important means of protection – and the possibility of evasion by flight – the central government approached sedentarization cautiously. Rather than relying only on force, officials tried to make the option of settlement and joining the army attractive by offering a wide range of incentives to those tribes who agreed to change their status. Such tribes were exempted from all regular duties (nomadic or sedentary) for several years at a time. In addition, they were granted freesubventions seeds and oxen, access tospecially sources of and otherInencouragements and that better were tailored forirrigation, different regions. return for these privileges the nomads were typically required to abandon their peripatetic lives and assume sedentary farming. They would pay a one-time special tax and desist from attacking or harming villages and the villagers in their new areas of settlement. In some parts of the empire, nomads obtained even broader privileges if they agreed to plant certain crops that were highly valued and/or needed, such as wheat and cotton in central and southern Anatolia. The Ottoman government also offered similar incentives to fugitive peasants who had quit their lands and were roaming the countryside. Even though such encouragements could be attractive, tribal members resisted registration and sedentarization, since these were usually followed by additional demands for taxes and military service.39 It was common for them to ignore, deflect, subvert or resist government orders. While it was usually the tribal chiefs who complained and wrote the petitions, it was not uncommon for individual members of a tribe to take the lead in such matters. The most common causes for complaint by the tribes was the distance they would have to travel, the size of the plots given to them, and the limited resources made available. Local officials reviewed such petitions and usually referred them to higher-ranking bureaucrats. Not surprisingly, the desert areas of Rakka in Syria where a large number of nomads were forced to settle formed a particularly strong source of discontent for the tribes that were sent there. Lack of water and limited vegetation were the main factors that the tribal leaders cited in demanding a change in their orders of settlement. Occasionally, tribes mobilized a large number of their members to resist the central government’s order, not only by fighting Ottoman forces but also by making their places of settlement inhospitable by burning and destroying the existing fields.40 Whether tribes would rebel and whether local notables would support the rebellious tribes depended on local conditions. The particular position taken by a tribe did not necessarily stay the same either. In response to changing circumstances, a tribe could switch from being rebellious to being supportive of the government, or vice versa.41 In trying to settlewith the nomadic tribal communities others, the government also clashed villagers whose interests wereand threatened byOttoman the introduction of new groups in their midst.42 An important part of this conflict was rooted in the ownership patterns in Ottoman agriculture, which had created several distinct groups with equally strong and competing claims of rights, especially in the more fertile areas of Anatolia and Mesopotamia. In addition to the peasants who had been working the land, these groups included tax farmers, absentee landlords, and members of the sultan’s household, all of whom had become de facto landlords with the introduction of life-long leases in .43 In a pattern that would repeat itself many times in the
— Nomads and tribes in the Ottoman empire —
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, absentee landlords could agree to government policies of sedentarization and pacification for their own reasons, while the peasants who were the actual cultivators in possession of the land strongly opposed the arrival of refugees and the settlement of nomadic tribes. In fact, most of the complaints of which records have survived, and which provide information about the processes and problems of settling nomads, were filed by villagers. Especially in western Anatolia, the common claim was that the land was already congested and that settling new groups would make life very difficult for people already living there. It was not uncommon for the Ottoman government to heed these complaints and reverse its position.44 Even though were regional successes, theasede ntarization policies of the seventeenth andthere eighteenth centuries did notoverall, produce permanently settled society. In fact, by the early nineteenth century the trend had once again turned in the opposite direction, with nomadism and nomadic tribes growing. While exact numbers are impossible to come by, one contemporary account estimates that, on the eve of the mid-nineteenth-century tanzimat, there were, just in Adana, as many as , nomads compared with merely , settled peasants.45 Rather than shrinking, some of the tribes were steadily expanding their power as well, some behaving as if they had all but seceded from the empire. This development was caused, in part, by the impossibility of imposing a uniform pattern of settlement across the empire from Europe to Asia. The nineteenth century
In the early nineteenth century, external wars and internal disorder made it harder for the central government to carry out its directives for creating a more sedentary empire. In particular, the inability of the Ottomans to fill the vacuum left by the Russians after the – war allowed local notables and Kurdish chiefs to expand their power in the east. Some Kurdish tribes quickly gained control of a series of citadels in the border areas of eastern Anatolia, creating a region that was effectively cut off from the rest of the empire. They then used these as bases to attack travellers, traders and peasants.46 One of these Kurdish chiefs, Badr Khan, eventually controlled the entire region between Diyarbakir and Mosul, becoming so powerful that in the s and the s he issued coins in his own name.47 Even though they were expanding their power, building palaces, maintaining armed forces, and even establishing dynasties, the Kurdish tribes never abandoned their pastoral nomadism completely. They continued to circulate in and around their regions, and fought with each other in order to gain advantage and keep alive their tribal identities. In this way they could also keep the centre at bay, being always prepared to revert to their nomadic lives if conditions changed. This made it nearly impossible for the Ottoman empire ever completely to subdue control the Kurdish tribes inofthe In theand period between the abolition theeast. Janissaries in and the creation of a new professional army, the Ottoman government carried out a series of campaigns using former soldiers and local irregulars. The purpose of these campaigns was to pacify the border areas that had become all but ungovernable. In particular, the government targeted the local notables of the Black Sea region, rebellious tribes in Libya, Kurdish emirates in northern Iraq, Kurdish families in the east and the south, and the Bedouin who had been pushed north to Syria during the eighteenth-century Wahhabi uprisings and the later campaigns of the Egyptian armies.48
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Among all the regions and groups with whom the Ottomans had to deal, they were particularly challenged by the situation in the Taurus region in the south. To deal with the large confederation of tribes which all but controlled of a large swathe of territory here, the Ottoman government created a special fighting force called fırka-i ıslahiyye (‘the army of reform’), consisting of former soldiers and Albanian, Zeybek, Georgian, Circassian and Kurdish fighters who were recruited locally.49 Even though it was set up as a military operation, the campaign by the fırka-i ıslahiyye was carried out as a comprehensive programme of pacification and sedentarization which also created new towns and novel methods of administration; all were designed to strengthen the ties between centre campaigns and these regions. Stagingthe military was only one part of the Ottoman response to the growing power of tribes and local families. Over time, these were joined by new laws and new institutions that gave the military and other steps a higher degree of consistency. In a government publication summarizing all laws and regulations passed between and , it is stated that all the nomadic tribes in Anatolia would henceforth be settled in their winter pastures, and that they too would be included in the imperial censuses. From then on, tribes would be expected to engage in agriculture and pay their taxes accordingly.50 In , in a further attempt to undermine local centres of power, the government deprived the tribal sheikhs from the official recognition that had been accorded to them, and incorporated them into the administrative hierarchy of provincial administration with titles such as kaymakam and mutasarrıf.51 These regulations concerning nomads and tribes were accompanied by several laws designed to strengthen the overall institutional framework of the empire. One such initiative that aimed both to enhance the power of the central government and to protect settled peasant agriculture was the land code enacted in . While the overall thrust of this law was to undermine the large landholding notables and to undo the harmful effects of the tax-farming system, it was also a clearly and strongly anti-tribal measure. Most significantly, in a direct blow to the foundations of tribal life, the law replaced communal property and identity with the principle of individual ownership. Individual households could take advantage of this and acquire the lands which they had already been cultivating, by registering with the central government. The central government also requested reports about the behaviour of tribes following their (re)settlement. If tribes persisted in unruly behaviour, they would be moved further away and punished in new ways. The Kurdish tribe of Hemvend was one community that was the subject of repeated government orders and attention, especially in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. After causing numerous problems in the region between Baghdad, Mosul and the Iranian border, and after some of their leaders escaped from Yemen where they had been imprisoned, they were divided into 52
groups,who and remained one part was forced in to the Işkodra regionofofcirculation Albania. Those in the area to butmove refused to settle near their places around Mosul were pushed towards Adana, Ankara, Sivas and Konya. 53 At the same time, specific orders were given for the confiscation and selling of their animals, so that they would have nothing to come back to.54 Another group of the Hemvends who continued to organize raids between Mosul and Kerkük were ejected and settled in Cyrenica.55 In the execution of this last order, the central government kept a particularly close watch on the Hemvend as they moved from Mosul to Albania and Libya, by way of Izmir.56 In , because of the growing cost of moving the Hemvends around
— Nomads and tribes in the Ottoman empire —
the empire, the government ordered that some of their animals should be sold and the money raised be used to meet some of these expenses.57 Other Kurdish confederations that have played prominent roles in the modern history of Iraq were also a source of concern for the Ottomans in the nineteenth century. In , Ismail Paşa, vice-director of the Ottoman Military Inspectorate, was given special powers and the public prosecutor in Mosul was ordered to work with him, so that the Berzenci and Talabanli tribes would be forced to cease attacking each other and the banditry in the region could be brought under control.58 Several months later, the central government was alerted once again to the ongoing conflict between these 59
two confederations. Two months this, Ismail Paşaweapons reportedwere thatconfiscated the trial of and the leaders of the two confederations wasafter completed. Their 60 they were ordered to abandon their nomadic and bandit ways. In executing these orders, the government continued to use force. According to one estimate, between and , , tribal members were killed as they were being pushed to settle across the empire. This gave rise to a very rich folklore of pain and persecution at the hands of the state, and remained a central motif in the culture of these tribes long after they took up sedentary life.61 Available data suggest that the number of settlements in tribal areas, and villages that were associated with specific tribes, steadily increased during the course of the nineteenth century.62 It seems also that the central government took special care to create as many mixed villages as possible, in order to break the cohesion of tribal solidarities as they took up settled life.63 As a corollary to this trend, data also show that the nomadic population declined in the Ottoman empire during the same period. In Anatolia, the proportion of this decline is calculated as per cent between and .64 In the Arab provinces there was a similar decline. Around the province of Basra, the proportion of nomads declined from to per cent between and ; around Baghdad, the ratio was and per cent respectively. 65 However, as happened in earlier periods, this era of relative settlement would also unravel in a period of internal strife and external warfare in the early decades of the twentieth century. Under such circumstances, the tribes rallied their people and restored some of their nomadic practices, re-creating a widely diverse and fluctuating picture for the Ottoman empire. CONCLUSION
The waves of sedentarization policies and their outcome in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries show that there was no linear or definitive transition from nomadic to settled order in the Ottoman empire. More typically, in many parts of the empire we cyclical between andthese sedentary life,patterns sometimes ing see theavery samealternation communities. For nomadism the most part, cyclical and involvtransitions were maintained and reinforced by the continuing strength of tribal relations. At least in part, the very policies of sedentarization conceived and implemented by the Ottoman government ended up supporting this fluctuating pattern. For example, the Ottoman state frequently resorted to the old tactic of using some tribes to punish or settle others. A well-known example of such a policy is provided by the constitution and operation of the Hamidiye regiments. Formed in , these regiments were staffed exclusively by Sunni Kurds, who were given a free hand and strong
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government backing to pacify Alevi Kurds and Armenian and other non-Muslim minorities in eastern Anatolia. The tribes recruited into the Hamidiye stayed within their own tribes and were led by their chiefs. Their number increased from about forty regiments in to sixty-three in . 66 Some of these chiefs created local networks of administration that looked like the replicas of the imperial institutions. Ibrahim Paşa of the Milan tribe, who was made a Hamidiye commander, became so powerful that he was referred to as the ‘uncrowned king of Kurdistan’. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Hamidiye became very well known for their brutality, raiding the property of rival Kurdish tribes, especially Armenians, and pushing them of their land. In most casesout state officials had little choice but to rely on tribal leaders to carry out their policies in various localities, and were forced to negotiate with the very elements whose power they were trying to curb. For example, it almost always fell on the tribal chiefs to guarantee that their tribes would stay at their designated places of settlement.67 If they did not, the chiefs would bear the brunt of punishment. In return, the chiefs were given a higher quality of land and granted privileged access to higher echelons of bureaucracy; they themselves were rewarded with posts, salaries, medals and lump sum payments. The old practice of allowing them to settle in familiar grounds around their winter pastures and also of making provision for the continuation of annual husbandry were some of the other concessions that the central government made in its dealings with tribes. Sometimes the very act of settlement helped reinforce tribal organization and identity, since the tribes now had to deal with new contingencies such as gaining access to water, which could only be achieved as a group and even in cooperation with other tribes.68 In such instances, instead of being subsumed under the centralizing power of the state, while serving the government, tribal chiefs enhanced their position and became even more powerful and indispensable. The longterm importance of tribal and nomadic activities for the Ottoman empire and the particular policies the Ottoman state followed over the years guaranteed mobility a place in the social organization of the empire. Furthermore, migratory activities survived the transition from empire to nation. As a result, Turkey and other new states in the Middle East during the twentieth century continued to govern large and occasionally restless mobile groups. NOTES
. . Cook : ; Islamog˘lu-Inan : . Orhonlu : ; Planhol : . Murphey : ; Planhol : ; Orhonlu : , n. . . Inalcık a: . . Çetintürk ; Inalcık . Sümer –: . . Inalcık : –; Van . Bruinessen a: . Çetintürk : ; Inalcık : –; Sümer –: –; Emecen : . Gündüz : ; Planhol : . Çetintürk : ; Orhonlu : . Van Bruinessen a: –. Lowry a: . Evliya Çelebi : –, –; Sinclair .
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. Sümer –: ; Orhonlu : –; Çetintürk : –; Inalcık b. Ahmet Refik a: , , documents , . Braudel : ı, . . Inalcık : . On the celali uprisings, see chapter , by Oktay Özel, in this volume. Firestone . . Inalcık : ; Sümer –: . Ze’evi : . . Inalcık : ; Sümer –: . Ze’evi : ; Singer : . .
Inalcık : . .–; Güçer : –; Orhonlu : –, n. . Ahmet Refik b: Ahmet Refik a; Inalcık ; Çetintürk . Gökbilgin . Barkan –, Part II: , ; Adanır : . Ze’evi : –. Murphey : , . Barkan : . Braudel : I, . Barkan –, Part II: . ; Gökçen . Planhol : ; cf. Inalcık : . Two crucial sources for the early policies of sedentarization are Ahmet Refik a and Orhonlu . Ahmet Refik’s book is a compilation of orders issued by the central government in order to administer and settle nomadic tribes. Although not a comprehensive list, it is nevertheless a valuable source, containing orders covering the period between and . Gökbilgin . Abou-el-Haj .
Orhonlu :a: –., , documents , . Ahmet Refik Orhonlu : –. Khoury : ; Masters : . Ahmet Refik a: . On life-long leases, see chapter , by Ariel Salzmann, in this volume. Orhonlu : . Gould : –. Fraser : I, –, , . Von Möltke : –. Marufog˘lu: : . Cevdet Pas¸a : –. In Kavanin ve nizamat mecmuası, cited in Marufog˘lu : . Marufog˘lu : . Ibid.: –. BOA-MV (Bas¸bakanlık Osmanlı Ars¸ivi, Meclis-i Vükela Mazbataları) /, / (, Za ).
BOA-MV/ / ( BOA-MV ( Za Re ). ). BOA, Dahiliye Nezareti, Muhaberat-ı Umumiye İdare Kalemi / ( C ); Marufog˘lu : –. BOA-MV / (, Z. ). BOA-MV / (, S. ). BOA-MV / (, Ra ). BOA-MV / (, Za ). Gould : –.
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Ibid.: –; Lewis : –, –. Gould : . Ibid.: xv. Nakash : . Van Bruinessen a: ; Klein . Orhonlu : , n. . Nakash : –.
CHAPTER TWO
THE OTTOMAN ECONOMY IN THE EARLY IMPERIAL AGE
Rhoads Murphey
I
n order to gain a sense of the base economic conditions prevailing in the western Anatolian hinterlands of cities such as Bursa, which after became the nucleus of the fledgling Ottoman state, it is instructive to start with the vivid and evocative details provided in the narrative of Ramon (or Raymond) Muntaner detailing the marauding activities of the Catalan companies in the Marmara region between and . The overriding concern of the bands of military enterprisers who came to dominate frontier society in the late thirteenth century was to maximize opportunities for short-term profits within a given locality, and then to move on to new sites for exploitation when local resources gave out. This point is made explicit on a number of occasions in Muntaner’s account. In chapter , relating the aftermath of Frey Roger’s first series of campaigns in Anatolia, Muntaner makes the following observation: The Boca Daner [i.e., the Çanakkale Boğazı/Dardanelles] is surrounded by good and fertile places in all parts [i.e., the Biga Yarımadası/peninsula stretching eastward towards Bursa]. You will find that, on each side, there was a very fine town and a very fine castle at the time we went there. All has been destroyed and ruined by us.1 Following Frey Roger’s assassination in , separate commanderies and captaincies were established in Thrace. Each drew its livelihood from small-scale, largely uncoordinated raids aimed mostly against Byzantine towns and settlements along the north shore of the Marmara. Muntaner’s boastful acknowledgement of the anarchic conditions thatreading. prevailed the Byzantine borderlands in these yearsnor provides sometimes startling In in chapter he notes: ‘We sowed nothing ploughed . . . but took each year as much . . . as we wanted . . . So we lived for five years on aftercrops and the most wonderful raids were made man could ever imagine’.2 He then relates the division of the spoils at the conclusion of a minor skirmish with Byzantine forces in the vicinity of Gallipoli. We took thirty-seven horsemen and . . . [a number of] foot. The next day in Gallipoli we had an auction of the horses and prisoners . . . and of the booty
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twenty-eight gold hyperpers for each armed horse and fourteen for each light horse and seven for each foot soldier, so that every one had his share . . . This was done not through our worth, but by the virtue and grace of God.3 In chapter Muntaner returns to the theme developed in chapter and once again reassures his audience that, as a point of honour and regimental pride, ‘for five years we never sowed or planted or dug over the land.’4 In chapter , he explains why he was compelled to abandon his base at Gallipoli in favour of a new location south of Salonica. It is the truth that we had been in the peninsula of Gallipoli and in that district for seven years since the death of the caesar [i.e., Frey Roger] and we had lived there five years on the land and there was nothing left. And so, likewise, we had depopulated all that district for ten days journey in every direction; we had destroyed all the people, so that nothing could be gathered there. Therefore we were obliged to abandon that country.5 Muntaner’s final summing up of the activities of the company in the Aegean and Marmara basin is offered in chapter . When I parted from the company . . . they went to a peninsula called Cassandra. . . . At the entrance to the peninsula they pitched their tents and from there they raided as far as the city of Salonica . . . And they consumed that district as they had done those of Gallipoli, Constantinople and Adrianople.6 The general ethos described in Muntaner’s account of the Catalan company – a body run on roughly similar lines to modern business enterprises based on profitsharing principles – was not of course confined to the particularities of one tradition, whether Muslim or Christian. Nor does it typify conditions prevailing in just one geographical sector. What Muntaner describes applied broadly, perhaps even universally, to the general lawlessness of frontier society in the interstices between the late Mongol and Byzantine Ouikomene or, in Hodgson’s terms, the ‘Inhabited Quarter’.7 In earlier centuries the region had developed ‘citied’ environments possessing well-established urban institutions and regulatory mechanisms sufficient to meet Hodgson’s definitional criteria. However, throughout the era of declining imperial control between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries, substantial parts of Western Asia had lapsed into the conditions of near anarchy evoked in Muntaner’s account. In their endeavours to build a flourishing economy from such a low base, the early Ottoman sultans actively pursued a number of policies to encourage and protect agricultural and commercial development and to foster the growth of urban economies. The following discussion takes for granted such well-known features of Ottoman revenue collection and distribution practices as the timar system, poll tax and customs levies.8 Instead, it assesses the degree to which early Ottoman sultans were able successfully to pursue certain economic policies and the considerations behind these.
— The Ottoman economy in the early imp
erial age —
Figure . Historical photograph showing the covered market (old bedestan) of Istanbul in the foreground. The core of these buildings was completed during the reign of Mehmed II between and . Photograph by Ali Rıza Paşa (d. ). In the collection of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (neg. LC-USZ-).
INTRUSION OF THE REGULATORY PRESENCE OF THE STATE INTO THE URBAN ECONOMY The Ottomans and Byzantines endured a century of uneasy co-existence between the Ottoman landing at Gallipoli in and the eventual fall of Constantinople in . The generalized breakdown of law and order in provincial society at the margins was a matter of concern for both regimes, but it was arguably the Ottomans who achieved greater success in imposing the rule of law and establishing the order and predictability necessary for economic stability andrural growth. regulation the early imperial era covered both the and Ottoman the urbanattempts spheres. at Attention wasinpaid to the monitoring and control of population movement through the land registration regime, organized by means of the tahrir system, the periodic imposition of forced transfers of tribal and other groups to support settlement and development objectives in newly subdued territories, and the organized transfer of skilled workers to urban centres (the sürgün mechanism). Above all, it was success in governing urban markets through the strict application of the ihtisab regulatory regime that became a distinguishing feature of the Ottoman regime in the early imperial era.
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Current scholarship tends to reject the consensus view previously held among historians that exaggerated not just the extent of the early modern state’s dominance in political matters but also its efficiency and reach in economic regulation. 9 The limits of state power applied most markedly in attempts to regulate economic activity in the rural agrarian sphere, which accounted for between and per cent of economic output in most parts of the medieval and early modern Balkans and Middle East. Testing the limits of state power is problematic and quantifying its actual extent in economic terms remains elusive. In his study on the statistical reliability of the Ottoman land and population surveys based on a limited sample from western Anatolia, Michael speculated that, despite clarity andsixteenth comprehensiveness, the Cook Ottoman even initsitsreputation developedfor state of the century, tahrir system, seemingly missed (i.e., failed to record) around a quarter of the population. 10 As an instrument even of state fiscal control, let alone regulation of economic practice and the peasant producers’ behaviour, the tahrir system was thus far from perfect. Particularly in this latter sphere, of regulating the behaviour of the main agents (peasants, pastoralists and others) who operated in the rural context, the depth of penetration of the state’s legislative and regulatory impact has been convincingly questioned. 11 The weight of custom, tradition and time-honoured practice proved difficult for the state even to modify, let alone discourage or dislodge, despite the best efforts of the land surveyors, tax assessors, agronomic advisers and other would-be regulators it deployed in seeking to alter peasant behaviour to conform with state expectations and administrative orders. It would be indefensible to ignore or minimize the scale and importance of the Ottoman state’s efforts to sedentarize nomads, regulate and tax peasants, and generally transform the rural landscape by extending its sphere of influence over the pastoralists and cultivators of the soil who made up the bulk of the Ottoman population. However, in realistic terms, and recognizing the real limits of Ottoman state power in the fifteenth century, it was from the narrow base of the more closely regulated urban space and urban markets that the Ottomans launched their first and most effective efforts aimed at modifying undesired market tendencies such as hoarding and price speculation, and at creating the basis of a fair balance between mercantile profit and affordability for average urban consumers. Indeed, they staked the reputation and legitimacy of the new dynastic regime on the success of their regulatory influence in urban settings. The primacy and seriousness of the Ottoman commitment to enforcement of fair trading practices in urban markets comes out with striking clarity in surviving early documents.
ENFORCING A REGULATORY REGIME By the sixteenth-century high imperial era, order, security, discipline and regulatory consistency had become the general hallmarks of Ottoman administration, through the predominance of kanun (sultanic administrative law). As part of this, from the very outset of the imperial venture the Ottomans had taken special care to lead by example and to protect their record for good government in cases where the sultans’ own personal or palace household interests were involved. A sultanic order of , addressed by Mehmed II to his commissioner in Bursa in charge of special procurements, makes clear this inward-directed orientation of Ottoman regulatory effort.12 The terms of
— The Ottoman economy in the early imp
erial age —
appointment specified for the sultan’s agent define explicitly the limits of his proxy’s jurisdiction and powers, emphasizing that it was both necessary and appropriate that the appointee be issued strongly worded warnings to observe open market access rules and other regulatory restraints. Despite the lofty status of his principal and the highpriority nature of his business, the agent is neither to demand nor to expect treatment on terms other than those offered to any prospective customer in the marketplace. Particular care was taken to avoid creating the impression that either the sultan or the agent acting on his behalf operated above the law or laid claim to special privilege or economic advantage from which the general public was excluded. This self-denying ordinance foodstuffs.applied with particular force with regard to access to basic goods, especially You are to refrain from seeking preferential terms, favourable treatment or imposing forced sales on those who bring grain for sale at the grain market by invoking the phrase ‘we are buyers for the state and imperial household’. You are to purchase goods on the market on the terms offered to all other prospective buyers and you should realise your purchases using reliable intermediaries, avoiding any acts that may cause injury to the general public. In short . . . whether with respect to cloth purchases, grain purchases or the purchase of any other goods [for the imperial household] you are to execute your purchases and requisitions with absolute integrity . . . striving to avert either the waste of imperial resources on the one hand or harm being visited on the public on the other. All purchases and transactions should always be carried out under regular auspices and scrutiny, using the good offices of the local justices (kadis) and police magistrates (subaşıs).13 The operative word in the Turkish text is dükeli, meaning ‘always’ or ‘as is the usual norm’,14 and implying that the insistence on procedure and strict adherence to marketplace regulations is either of long-standing application or at least an ideal on whose reintroduction the Ottoman regime places particular priority. It is worth noting that the principle of the sultan’s accountability to the same standards and norms of marketplace behaviour as both his kuls and his other tax-paying subjects is given forceful expression in a document reliably attributed to perhaps the most temperamentally autocratic Ottoman sultan of any era. The details of Bayezid II’s ihtisab kanunnamesi (marketplace regulations) for Bursa, dated , provide another revealing example of the motivating spirit behind Ottoman attempts to assert rights in the regulation of social relations at the local and municipal level. Both in the preamble to the ordinance and in subsequent chapter summations, it is made abundantly clear that what prompted the document was the sultan’s awareness of recent departures from previous standards to of make marketplace behaviour and socially responsible trading practice. He high was compelled a thorough review of the current situation and to lend the weight of his authority to the prompt restoration of previous good practice, whose exact requirements are revealed in minute detail in the body of the text. In the preface he says: It was previously ordered that a careful record be kept of all changes introduced to the price control regime of Bursa from the time of my accession [] to the present [] with a view to establishing the specific circumstances of the
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application of the price control regime for each type of good and commodity. Have the price assessment criteria been applied consistently over that time and, if not, when and under what circumstances were changes to assessment protocols introduced? In the case of variation, what is the basis of the new system of assessment? On all of these matters you [i.e., the kadi (judge) and the muhtesib (marketplace inspector)] were previously instructed to keep yourselves fully informed, omitting no relevant evidence whether large or small and to report to me as necessary in full detail so that your assessments and evaluations might serve as the firm basis for establishing the authorized regulations (kanunname) and be used as a reference and(may guidance when never required. In the accordance with the exulted and most noble order [its efficacy] cease), senior officials of each craft and trade were summoned one by one and each questioned concerning the character of customary assessment conventions for each product and asked whether these traditional protocols and controls were currently being observed or had been subjected to change over time. They were further prompted to explain the reasons behind any changes introduced and the exact dates and circumstances when these changes were adopted. In response to this summons, the guild officers responded and replied unanimously saying that for the past five or six years [i.e., since approximately ] no trace has remained of the customary pricing regime previously applied to the regulated crafts and trades. The whole price regime to its very foundation has been fundamentally altered, changed and corrupted such that at present virtually no one applies the customary standards observed of old for determining prices. In view of the current unsatisfactory and confused state of market regulation in Bursa [around the year ] I hereby order a new inspection of crafts and trades to be carried out starting with the bakers [and continuing through the ranks of all the other craftsmen and traders present in the city]. 15 Strongly worded statements of regulatory intent such as those preserved in the documents of and demonstrate Ottoman resolve to achieve consistency in the enforcement of codes and regulations promulgated by the imperial authority. While such proclamations cannot serve as proof of Ottoman success in their stated objective of full regulatory control over urban markets, they provide at least strong evidence of the firmness of their legislative intent. Apart from such pronouncements of lofty principle, there is also plenty of corroborative evidence to suggest the government’s close engagement with local economic agents and actors at the municipal level and its effective intervention to broker compromises between the potentially diametrically opposed interests of producers and retailers on the one hand and common consumers on the other.
OTTOMAN ECONOMIC ORGANIZAT PROTOIMPERIAL ERA
ION IN THE
Just as in the political and administrative spheres it is premature to attribute absolute authority to Ottoman rulers before the capture of Constantinople, it is equally clear that mechanisms of control affecting various spheres of the economy – monetary policy, control of trade routes, centrally monitored investment strategies – had evolved
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only partially by . On the most basic level, connection between the two halves of the empire in Anatolia and Rumeli was, until the restoration of Ottoman control over Salonica in , maintained only tenuously throughout much of the period. As late as , while en route from Anatolia to assume command at Varna on the Danube, Murad II still relied on help provided by naval allies situated along the shores of the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus in order to avoid the Venetian blockade that had effectively closed the Dardanelles. The Chronicle of Kemalpaşazade (d. ) comments several times on the landlocked position of the Ottoman polity during Murad II’s reign: ‘Sultan Murad came to Gallipoli where he realised that the presence of the 16
Venetian barred any possibility of crossing there’. The Anonymous Chronicle provides afleet similar assessment of the sultan’s position: Murad arrived at Gallipoli where the fleet of the Frankish infidels had dispatched a large number of ships to close off the sea passage. In the end Sultan Murad managed to cross to Rumelia [i.e. Europe] on board a Genoese vessel from Galata.17 The subsequent unification of Ottoman territories in Europe and Asia by Mehmed II was of considerable economic as well as political significance. It was achieved through a series of campaigns, beginning with the conquest of Constantinople in and finishing with the defeat of Uzun Hasan, ruler of a territorially extensive, rival Anatolian Turkmen state, the Ak-Koyunlu, in August at a major battle at Başkent on the plain of Tercan near the banks of the Upper Euphrates. This was followed in by subordination of the Genoese community in Caffa in the Crimea, which secured Ottoman organizational (if not yet navigational or commercial) control over the Black Sea maritime zone. Thereafter, the Ottomans occupied a commanding position over an extensive trade network linking the coasts of the Aegean, the Marmara, and the Black Sea. The strength of the Ottoman economy in this period is reflected in Jacopo da Promontorio’s impressive list of Ottoman assets and revenue sources dating from .18 But in , a mere twenty-five years earlier, this was a world still undreamed of. In the early fifteenth century, the significantly fragmented Ottoman state was composed of semi-independent or only partially linked regions. One of the inescapable results of this political framework was an economy characterized by autarchic norms and practices, against which the centralizing influence of the state authority and state regulatory mechanisms was only beginning – in partial form and at a gradual pace – to make inroads. The chronicler Aşıkpaşazade (d. after ) provides the example of the centrally located province of Saruhan in western Anatolia, where Bayezid II’s attempts to impose export restrictions on salt were met with stiff resistance restrictions and, in effect, ignored: [i.e. Saruhan] there trading and transport imposed on‘in saltthat butdistrict the [indigenous tribes] paidwere no attention to these restrictions’.19 Governed by this sense of the pervasive parochialism of the eastern Mediterranean in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, our account of Ottoman economic life in the pre-conquest era (i.e., pre-) will place particular emphasis on continuity of practice between the early Ottomans and their Anatolian predecessors, the Seljukids and the Turkish beylicates.
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TRADES AND TRADE ROUTES The products of the pastoral economy formed a very significant element of the western Anatolian export profile in the fourteenth century. The trade in horses between the south-western Anatolian principality of Menteşe and the Venetian island of Crete provides clear evidence of the magnitude of this activity contemporary with the early years of the Ottoman emirate.20 While it is difficult to judge the importance of particular trading commodities from the limited sources available for the period before , the few surviving documents provide strong indications that wealth and prosperity in the early Ottoman state tended to be measured in terms of herd size. Orhan Gazi indicated his preference for his son Murad’s succession in a pre-decease disposition of his property drawn up in July by assigning eighteen mares (yund) as his share.21 Even after the siege of Constantinople and the conclusion of the Veneto-Ottoman war of – , a contract for customs of the market zones of the capital (i.e., Gelibolu [Gallipoli] and Üsküdar) from reveals that livestock in transit (horses, camels and sheep) still accounted for a significant part of the nearly , ducat annual revenues included in the contract. The actual value of the contract was . million akçes, equivalent to , ducats at the rate of akçes to the ducat.22 Empire-wide (even accounting for a certain degree of exaggeration in Jacopo da Promontorio’s survey report of Ottoman revenues), the tithe on just three categories of animals – horses, oxen and mules – and excluding sheep, by far the most significant revenue-producing category of animal, yielded five times this amount, or roughly , ducats. 23 Ottoman commercial activity was not limited to animals and animal products, but overlooking these, alongside other sources such as salt and mining works, as important elements in the state’s revenue make-up results in ain serious of economic realities. A developed transit trade luxurydistortion goods, from both Egypt and Iran, was a legacy inherited by the Ottomans from their Muslim predecessors in Anatolia. Bursa, in Ottoman hands for less than a decade when visited by Ibn Battuta in , is described by that traveller as ‘a great and important city with fine bazaars and wide streets’.24 Bursa remained the economic and political capital of the Ottoman state well beyond the end of the interregnum in . Court life shifted definitively to Edirne only with the reinstatement of Murad II on the throne in and the celebration there in of his son Mehmed’s royal wedding. Until then, the preference for Bursa as the place of residence for the principal governors of the realm, and of the sultan himself, is clear in near-contemporary historical records.25 Bursa was also favoured by its geographical position close to the most important eastern Mediterranean trading centres of the Genoese, at Pera, Phocaea (Foça) and Chios in the Aegean. Throughout the period, from the first Genoese–Ottoman commercial treaty in (confirmed and expanded in ), and despite Mehmed II’s offensives from the mid-s against the Gattalusi family in the Aegean, the Ottomans worked in close commercial co-operation with the Genoese. Recent research suggests that, while Mehmed’s establishment of control over the Dardanelles after compromised the integrity of the Genoese trading ‘empire’ in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, Italian mercantile interests nevertheless maintained – and even expanded – their pre-eminent position in Ottoman markets until at least the s.26 The transformation of the economy according to Ottoman precepts and priorities begun under Mehmed II was demonstrably less comprehensive in some regions of the
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empire than in others. The active participation of Muslim merchants from Anatolia in the Black Sea trade following the establishment of Ottoman control over Amastris/ Amasra in , Sinope and Trabzon in , and the Crimean port of Caffa in is well documented in the customs register of Caffa from c..27 It appears, however, that in the early fifteenth century there was little outlet for such activity. Subject to the restrictions imposed by their state’s territorial confinement for much of the period to Anatolia west of the Sakarya and ‘Bulgaria’ south of the Balkan range (with only the most tenuous connection between the two regions), the Ottomans sought before to develop the economic potential of their patrimonial lands, in which Bursa contin28
ued to play aand leading role. integration of the empire’s dispersed economic zones in Anatolia Europe was The realized in full only during the s.
SÜRGÜN: TRANSREGIONAL LABOUR TRANSFERS One of the key variables affecting the growth potential of newly conquered areas, both rural districts and cities, was the availability of sufficient workers in key industries. Ottoman expansion into the Balkans after their victory at the first battle of Kosovo in was assisted by the ready availability of a large cohort of Türkmen and other Muslim settlers from Anatolia who performed basic tasks in agriculture and animal husbandry. They contributed significantly to the enhanced productivity of the land and the sustainability of Ottoman rule.29 Collectively, population movements – organized in a planned and carefully calculated manner by the state authority – formed one of the key elements in both rural prosperity and urban growth in Ottoman Balkan territories.30 Relocation of key workers – craftsmen, administrators, municipal officials and other civilian groups – from towns and cities of the Anatolian hinterland secured a further benefit in contributing to the process of reconciliation, normalization and the general stabilization of Ottoman rule in the aftermath of military subjugation. The post- development of Istanbul itself illustrates how sürgün policies were carefully planned to secure the transfer of individuals (whether urban or rural based) who could offer the particular experience, skills and professional expertise needed to promote reurbanization and growth after a period of demographic and economic contraction. Mehmed II was forcefully criticized by contemporary commentators for the unprecedented scale and vengefulness of deportations from Karaman province to Istanbul between and . 31 Yet, from the perspective of the city dwellers of Istanbul, who gained immeasurably from the labour and skills transfer and the creation of whole new neighbourhoods, the process resulted in durable, long-term enhancement of the new capital’s commercial potential.32 There is clear evidence that similar policies had been introduced following the conquests of Edirne () and 33 on a consistent basis throughout the century other Balkanpreceding cities such theasfall Üsküb of Constantinople. (Skopje, in ) Statistics for Üsküb indicate that the city population in this remote sector of the imperial borderlands grew very rapidly between the mid-s and the mid-s. 34 This occurred despite the fact that, for a prolonged period after until around , when Thessalonica was restored to Ottoman control, the region experienced continuous administrative disruption, periods of disconnection with the imperial heartlands, and the depressing effects of general economic uncertainty arising from the disturbed political conditions. Following the stabilization of the Balkans during
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the reign of Mehmed II, Üsküb’s urban population grew even more dramatically, due in significant measure to population transfers achieved through the sürgün mechanism in addition to natural migration and settlement. In Üsküb comprised households ( Muslim and non-Muslim) accommodating a population of , souls. In addition to its military and administrative staff, a community of this size required a diverse and specialized civilian and artisanal workforce of sizeable proportions to provide basic market and other services.35 Barkan’s data extracted from the third survey of provides important clues about the socio-economic organization of Ottoman cities in the earlier period.36 While a noteworthy addition in is an expanded staff overseeing the mint operation ( darbhane ) based in the city, balancing that is a numerically still quite significant (perhaps even dominant) older group whose ‘profession’ is listed as akıncı or cross-border raider. To the ‘urban’ akıncı listed within the city confines in the mid-sixteenth century must also be added considerably larger concentrations in the outskirts and rural hinterlands. Their continuing presence reflects a general pattern in which Ottoman conquest was followed immediately by large-scale settlement accomplished through strategic (re)settlement of populations. One explicit purpose of sürgün was the removal of specific groups to a distant European frontier as a means of clearing the interior regions of Anatolia of contentious, previously disloyal and potentially anti-Ottoman tribal configurations who had strong ties and a long-established political base in inner Anatolia. In the areas where they were resettled (such as the regions along the Vardar valley, particularly its upper reaches around Üsküb), such groups then served a dual purpose, both as military specialists to defend and expand the frontier and as herders of animals, as pastoralists and as a supplementary labour force with the potential to settle, cultivate and stabilize the regions behind the military frontier. Ottoman chroniclers make consistent reference to the dual purpose served by these early Anatolian immigrants, as cultivators and producers and not just conquering heroes or gazis.37 Commenting on the resettlement in of Saruhan-Beglu Türkmen nomads from the area around Menemen near the west coast of Anatolia, who were first sent to the Filibe area and later accompanied their leader Pasha Yighit, the first Ottoman governor of Üsküb, Aşıkpaşazade states: ‘it is the law of sultans that they should order sürgün that it might cause the region ( il) to prosper once again’.38 Overwhelmingly, it was nomadic and pastoral groups who took part in sürgün. Evidence suggests that it was through a mixture of compulsion, the offer of favourable terms for taxation and the attraction of other economic incentives such as the easy availability of under-populated and under-cultivated land that settlers were attracted to the frontier regions. Once arrived in the newly acquired forward zones of the former military marches, sürgün groups underwent a rapid process of diversification and transition, from an economy based primarily on animal raiding to a mixed sedentary-pastoral economy which eventually led tohusbandry permanentand village settlement and growth of urban centres. How this process worked in detail in the earliest period of Ottoman expansion between and cannot be understood from strictly contemporary sources. However, some sense of the governing principles and incentive mechanisms driving early settlement can be extrapolated from sixteenth-century provincial regulations (sancak kanunnameleri) surviving from frontier regions such as Silistre (Silistria). Situated on the lower Danube and home to a mixed society of pastoralists, raiders, semi-sedentarized former nomads and fully sedentary cultivators,
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Silistre preserved its frontier character well into the later imperial era. The Silistre sancağı kanunnamesi, dating from the reign of Selim I (–), indicates that during
the process of settlement, and for groups who still practised seasonal transhumance, a grace period of tax exemption or leniency was recognized for tribesmen and settlers of sürgün srcin. Until these populations had taken up residence ( mütemekkin) for three consecutive years in a fixed place, they were exempted from the usual obligation of settled Muslim peasants to pay the tithe ( öşr) of per cent and captaincy assessment (salariye) of . per cent, which constituted the normal tax of one-eighth on grain production.39
MINES, MINTING AND MONETARY POLICY Another useful indicator of the level and intensity of Ottoman economic activity in the pre-conquest era is mining and the related spheres of coin minting and general monetary policy. By comparison with the post- empire, which needed far greater quantities of specie to meet the salary payments of an expanding bureaucracy and permanent army corps (the kapu kulları) paid in coin, the cash needs of the fourteenthand early fifteenth-century state were modest. In this early period the state’s ability, for the most part, to meet its regular obligations from existing treasury resources is indicated by the fact that the first major devaluation of the Ottoman silver coinage based on the akçe occurred only in , at the beginning of Mehmed II’s first sultanate. So stable had the Ottoman coinage been in the first century and a half of the state’s existence that even this relatively ‘minor’ adjustment of per cent, reducing the akçe’s silver content from . to . carats or . to . grams, proved politically explosive and contributed to the forced abdication of the young sultan in September , a mere two years after his accession to the throne at his father’s insistence in August . Mehmed’s monetary adjustments can be considered minor given that the scale on which they were effected remains unclear. It is uncertain whether all of his accession year coins of AH () were low weight, or only those produced at selected mints.40 Evidence suggests that he later achieved considerable success in enforcing monetary controls: a document from addressed to the silver assayers of Bursa refers to the confiscation of a horde of ‘old’ (i.e., recalled) akçes.41 It nonetheless remains doubtful that any of his predecessors had enjoyed similar powers or efficacy in the realm of monetary control.42 Perhaps the best way of judging how far early fifteenth-century sultans were able to direct monetary policy by manipulation of the coinage is to examine the actual extent of Ottoman control over mineral resources in the two halves of the empire. There is a natural temptation to over-interpret scattered references in the chronicle record to the Anatolian province Ottomans’ acquiringofmines Rum and (the mineral Amasya-Tokat resources region) with their and in conquests Rumeli (the in theBalkans) central to mean that they thereby immediately assumed direct control over the exploitation of these mines. What seems more likely is that, initially, they either received proceeds from these mines in the form of ‘tribute’ or shared the resource with their local allies, vassals or prospective subjects. This pattern of joint exploitation seems clearest with respect to the copper mines at Küre, north of Kastamonu. Retrospective accounts written by Ottoman historians long after the definitive incorporation of the Candarid principality into the Ottoman realm in portray
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the result of Beyazid I’s preliminary incursion into the Küre region in as a ‘conquest’.43 However, it seems clear that the coastal zone remained outside the boundaries of direct Ottoman rule throughout the first half of the fifteenth century, effectively precluding direct Ottoman influence in these mineral-producing regions. There is no firm evidence to suggest that the Ottomans were able to control production or distribution at the Küre mine during the lifetime of Isfendiyar Beg (d. ) or indeed at any time before Mehmed II’s conquest of . The financial value for the Ottomans of eventual control of the Küre copper mines is variously reported. Data from indicate that they yielded the treasury an annual akçes, 44equivalent akçes revenue of to ,, thenducats currentfrom exchange rate of per ducat) , ducats. The figure(atofthe , the preceding decade, 45 c., is closely comparable. It therefore seems possible, if not probable, that the Küre mines may have provided as much as , ducats annually in treasury revenues as early as the reign of Mehmed II. The sum of , ducats indicated in Jacopo da Promontorio’s account of is for revenues from all sources (customs, salt dues, etc.), not just copper mining.46 For copper production alone a maximum figure would have been more like , ducats.47 Before the Ottoman occupation of Serbia – a long-term objective finalized by the reconquest of Semendire in – the Ottomans relied as their principal source of silver supply on the intensive exploitation of a relatively few mining sites in Thrace (Sidrekapsi and Serez) and Macedonia (Kratova and Üsküp). Of these regions, Thrace was by far the more important. Although the chronicles contain enthusiastic reports of the ‘capture’ of the mines at Kratova as the immediate consequence of Murad I’s victory at Kosova in ,48 their full exploitation seems to date from the period not of Bayezid I (–) but of Bayezid II (–), a century later. Not only was Bayezid II responsible for a full-scale reorganization of the legal basis of mining in general, he also opened a mint at Kratova and ordered the striking of accession year coins there to commemorate the event.49 Bayezid II’s use of revenues from Kratova for the building and maintenance of the Üç Şerefeli mosque in Edirne is recorded in a document of , where the figure of , akçes represents the remittances of one tax farmer (amil).50 However, it is difficult to extrapolate from this limited data any reliable idea of total production at the mine. Some Üsküp mintings are known from the time of Murad II, but the active Ottoman mints before were Bursa, Amasya and Ayaslug in Anatolia, and Edirne and Serez in Rumeli. Of these, only Serez had significant silver deposits in its vicinity. Belon’s observations of , noting the operation of between and active forges at the mine, indicate sustained Ottoman investment in the development of the Serez site from the late fourteenth century onwards.51 In contrast, both Ottoman and non-Ottoman sources show that direct Ottoman exploitation of
the Serbian and Bosnian mines dates from earlier than thedominance s. At Srebrenica the Bosnian Kocacsilver evic´ (Kovaç-oğlu) familynomaintained their over local affairs, including mining, until the mid-s.52 Practically speaking, conditions conducive to the full development of Ottoman mining in the central Balkan lands had to await the pacification of the Bosnian frontier c.. In Serbia the Ottomans’ position before was roughly similar to that of ambiguous control and shared exploitation witnessed in their relations with the Isfendiyarids, who controlled the copper deposits of north-central Anatolia. According to the historian Kemalpaşazade, the tribute-paying potential of the Serbian kingdom just
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before the Ottoman conquest was ,, akçes, the equivalent (at the current rate of akçes per ducat) of , gold coins, 53 based largely on the production of the silver mines at Novobrdo, Trepça and Rudnik. In practice, however, the actual sum remitted by the Serbian ruler George Branković (d. ) and his successors in the years to fluctuated considerably between the base rate of , and a preconquest high of , ducats.54 In sum, Serbian compliance rates with Ottoman requests varied dramatically from year to year. Only after – could the Ottoman treasury direct and deploy this resource to match its own economic objectives. The preceding discussion relating both to Anatolian copper and Rumelian silver mining raises the implicit Ottoman sovereignty a necessary precondition to ensurequestion the flowofofwhether preciousfullmetals into the Ottomanwas lands. On the whole the answer is probably affirmative. Only after achieving a substantial jump in their real assets through Mehmed II’s acquisition of the Serbian silver mines and the Candarid copper mines c . were Ottoman rulers able to exercise meaningful control over monetary policy. While Mehmed’s predecessors – particularly his father Murad II – had sizeable royal treasuries, they generally placed greater reliance on external sources such as war booty (ganimet) than on fixed assets and internal sources such as tithing and taxation. The land registration of Albania in and its centralizing implications provoked violent reactions, illustrating the difficulties encountered by the Ottomans in their early attempts to introduce such registration and its corollary, direct taxation.55 In assessing the potential of the early Ottoman economy it is also important to recall not just the narrowness of Ottoman territory in the early fifteenth century compared to the vastly expanded empire resulting from the two transformatory events of the capture of Istanbul in and of Cairo in , but also the tenuousness of Ottoman rule at the margins, both in the northern and western Balkans and in the central Anatolian heartlands. The drift away from the centre in the aftermath of Timur’s invasion of Anatolia in and the re-establishment of a number of the former Anatolian beyliks profoundly affected the ability of Ottoman rulers to command and control both the manpower and the resources of Anatolia. Full Ottoman sovereignty over key Anatolian regions was reasserted only with the conquests of Mehmed II in the s and s.
CONTINUITY IN THE COMMERCIAL SPHERE Certain broader parameters and characteristics of Ottoman attempts to establish their hegemony over trade and trade routes require brief consideration. Ottoman expansion westwards to the Marmara and Aegean littoral in the fourteenth century was accomplished through co-operative arrangements. Wherever possible, the urban gradualism of was infrastructure the left Ottoman intact and ‘advance’ largely against undisturbed. the economic Contemporary predominance sources of reveal estabthe lished families in the Meander valley and their general preference for continuity of control. 56 Ottoman trading arrangements with the Italian maritime states were patterned closely on (if not inherited intact from) those established earlier, particularly by the Menteşe and the Aydınoğulları beylik s. The transformation of the Ottoman economy and the creation of a relationship of dependency vis-à-vis the Italian maritime states, whereby the tables were turned in the Ottomans’ favour, dates only from the half century after . Only then could the Ottomans proceed, in step-wise
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fashion, to incorporate all outstanding Genoese colonial bases in the Aegean and along the Black Sea coast. That this process of transformation was still only partial and gradual is indicated by numismatic evidence which suggests that Ottoman economic sovereignty was not very far advanced until well into Mehmed II’s reign. Based on his evaluation of the gold issues of Genoese Pera, one scholar has argued convincingly for the continuing dominance of the Genoese in Black Sea trade throughout the s. 57 Before it was never consistently possible for the Ottomans to break the semi-monopolistic control of either the Genoese in the Black Sea or Venice in the trade with Egypt and Syria. It is perfectly c orrect to attribute a commercial motive Bayezid in histosouthward expansion against the and to interpret histomove, in I, incorporate the hinterlands of Karamanids Antalya as prompted by the Ottomans’ desire for control over inland routes linking that port with their own commercial capital Bursa in the north. 58 Had the plan succeeded, the Ottomans would clearly have gained broader access to and the potential for control over trans-Mediterranean trading networks. However, Bayezid’s plans fell far short of full realization. The real battle for dominance over eastern Mediterranean trade was fought not in the late fourteenth century, but in the early sixteenth, when the Ottomans gained control of Egypt. In the early fifteenth century the Ottoman state possessed only Gallipoli to protect its strategic and commercial interests throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The sufficiency of its Gallipoli fl eet to challenge Venetian naval dominance was tested in and found wanting. 59 In the naval sphere too it was Mehmed II who oversaw the development of an effective Ottoman naval force capable of defeating the Venetians. Mehmed made it one of his chief priorities after to reconfigure and expand Ottoman naval and maritime capacity through an ambitious construction programme undertaken between the years and and the relocation of the imperial naval arsenal to Kadırga Limanı in Istanbul. 60 Control of Istanbul and, ultimately, of foreign shipping and navigation into and out of the Black Sea were necessary prerequisites for the Ottoman commercial revolution of the later fifteenth century. It seems inescapable that the terms of Ottoman commerce before were essentially a continuation of the pattern of dependency on western naval support and deference to western commercial interests witnessed during the final century of Byzantine rule.
NOTES
Muntaner , Chronicle: II, –. Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ibid.: Hodgson : I, , –. For a survey of basic features of the Ottoman economy in existence before , focusing on . the philosophical basis and practical operation of the land regime, see Inalcık : –. Ayubi ; Revel . Cook : , n. . Tsugitaka : –.
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. Anhegger and Inalcık (eds) : –. Ibid.: , lines –. Tarama Sözlüğü (–): II, . Beldiceanu (ed.) : document facsimile on p. , lines –. Kemalpaşazade, Chronicle [Murad II fragment], MS, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, MSTurcs, Supp. : folio a, and a similar comment on folio b. Anon. , Chronicle: , lines –. Promontorio . Aşıkpaşazade : –. Zachariadou : –. Öz (ed.) : . Tekin (ed.) : text facsimile, folios a–b; transcription, pp. –. Babinger : . Ibn Battuta : II, . Cf. Anon. , Chronicle: , lines –. Pistarino : –. . . Summarized in Inalcık : –; full transcript in Inalcık (ed.) . . Inalcık : ff. On the strategic importance of s ürgün as an engine of growth in the central Balkan lands from the early fifteenth century onwards, see Barkan –: ff., esp. , citing a document specifying the selection criteria for Anatolian population groups considered suitable for deployment as emigrants and settlers to under-populated districts of a newly conquered frontier province. Barkan –: –; Murphey . See in particular Kemalpaşazade –, Chronicle: , and, for a Karamanid perspective, Şikari , Chronicle: . . On the deportations from Karaman and its results, see Inalcık : .
For an overview on theofsouthern Balkans, seeOttoman Kaleshi – Lowry , esp. –, on thefocusing development Serres, based on the survey ofand . Inbaşı : . See also Popovic : , and Tevfik : –. Inbaşı : . Barkan –: , table . See also Todorov : , table . E.g., Lutfi Paşa ([] ): , re the deportation c. of Aktav Tatars from the Iskilip region of central Anatolia to the Filibe (Plovdiv) area in southern Bulgaria. Aşıkpaşazade : (line ) and [] : (line ). See Barkan : , para. ; . Akgündüz –: III, , para. . For . doubts on this score, see Inalcık (ed.) : , n. . Inalcık (ed.) : , text of document no. . On the wide circulation of foreign coins (especially gold), until the later fifteenth century, see Pamuk : –. On the diverse (and heterogeneous). mix of coins in the Black Sea economic zone, until at least the mid-sixteenth century, see Inalcık (ed.), : –. Cf. Hoca Sadeddin [–] , Chronicle: I, . Barkan (ed.) –: . Murphey : .
Promontorio Cf. Babinger : : . ; I.nalcık : , table I: . Cf. Neşri –, Cihannüma: I, , lines –. An example is provided in Pere : . Gökbilgin (ed.) : . Belon : folio a. Beldiceanu (ed.) : . Kemalpaşazade –: . Babinger : .
— Rhoads Murphey —
. Inalcık : xiii. Zachariadou : –; Foss . Sahillioğlu –: –. . The argument is cogently presented in Inalcık a: –, esp. . See . Setton : –. Inalcık : .
CHAPTER THREE
THE LAW OF THE LAND
Colin Imber
T
he economy of the Ottoman empire rested on peasant labour, and, in an area extending from the western Balkan peninsula to eastern Anatolia and into Syria and northern Iraq, the typical peasant tenement – or çift – was a farm worked usually, but not inevitably, by a single family. Most tenements belonged to a timar (fief), and it was the fief-holders who controlled the peasants’ access to the land. Between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries, most fief-holders were sipahis (cavalrymen), who held their fiefs in return for army service, but fiefs also supported vezirs, governors and other servants of the sultan during their time in office. From the seventeenth century, fiefs increasingly went to tax farmers and, in the eighteenth, following the introduction of lifetime tax farms in , came to resemble private estates. However, neither peasant nor fief-holder owned the land: only what was above the land – trees, vines and buildings – could be held as private property. The issue was not who owned the land,1 but who owned the revenues from it. Private proprietors owned the taxes from their estates as property which they bequeathed to their heirs; fief-holders owned the taxes from the fief for the period of their tenure. This system of land tenure and taxation was an inheritance from pre-Ottoman 2 regimes, with many local variations within the system. Nonetheless, from the late fifteenth century, Ottoman administrators attempted to codify and, as far as possible, standardize the laws governing relations between peasant and fief-holder. The reign of Bayezid II (–), when there was a need to consolidate the conquests of his father Mehmed II (–), saw the first major effort in this direction: the kanunname (law-book) for the district of Hüdavendigar around Bursa became the model for later codes. Shortly afterwards, a compiler several rather disparate documents from the early to mid-fifteenth centuryamalgamated to produce a kanunname misleadingly attributed to Mehmed II.3 More importantly, a systematic kanunname, applicable throughout the empire, appeared in about . 4 A new recension of this code appeared thirty or more years later, following the conquests of Selim I (–) and Süleyman I (– ),5 while the next major revision of the law came after the suppression of the celali rebellions in , as part of an effort to restore order to the land. The main concern of early kanunnames was taxation, the clauses on land tenure tending to deal with exceptional and even random cases. The s, however, saw
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the promulgation of the ‘New Kanunname’, the most enduring achievement of the reforms of the Köprülü vezirs. This was a comprehensive land code, made up of extracts from earlier texts compiled systematically under headings. It remained in use until the appearance of the land code of during the tanzimat (reform) era. What follows is an account of the law as it developed to this point.
THE ÇIFT The term çift means literally a ‘yoke’ and, in principle, comprised the area of land that a family with a yoke of oxen could cultivate within a year. In the late fifteenth century, the systematization of the laws of land and taxation created the need for a more precise definition, and this the compilers of the kanunname for Hüdavendigar supplied: a çift is taken as consisting of or dönüms of good land, dönüms of land of middling quality and to dönüms of poor quality land. A dönüm is an area of normal paces lengthwise and breadthwise.6 This definition, which took into account the size of the holding and the quality of the land, set the standard for the empire, reappearing in Bayezid II’s kanunname of c.7 and in a number of local codes. Some later kanunnnames slightly modify this scheme, but it was the measurements fixed in that the compilers of the New Kanunname were to adopt in the s.8 In some regions, however, old definitions persisted. In parts of central Anatolia in the mid-sixteenth century, the popular definition of a çift was not according to the precise measurements of the land, but rather according to the yield of the soil, while the system in use in Syria continued to measure land in terms of the work that a yoke of oxen could perform. 9 In these cases, the land surveyors adapted the term çift to refer to the type of tenement found in the locality rather than attempting to impose the standard. In south-east Anatolia and northern Iraq, some fief-holders continued to equate a çift of land with a yoke of oxen, but did so simply in order to increase the amount of tax that they could collect, by demanding that families with two or more yokes pay at a higher rate than those with only one. This was a practice which the land surveyors uncovered – and prohibited – in Diyarbekir in ,10 extending the same prohibition later in the century to the adjoining province of Mosul.11 However defined, the term çift always denoted an undivided plot of land and was the unit which surveyors used to determine a peasant’s tax liability, fixing the rate according to whether he held half scattered a çift or less. In mountainous regions where çift, and parcels of fertile land were too asmall to amalgamate into çift s, instead of calculating the tax per çift, the land surveyors calculated it per dönüm on each plot, at the standard rate of one akçe per two dönüms for good quality land and one akçe per three for land of poor quality.12 In districts where, by contrast, there was a surplus of fertile land, the law permitted cultivators to farm additional plots, provided they continued to work the çift for which they were registered. When they did so, following a principle enunciated already in the kanunname for Hüdavendigar, they paid tax per dönüm on the extra land, in addition to the tax on their çift.13
— The law of the land —
In defining the dimensions of a çift, the compilers of the kanunname also specified how much land the occupant could set aside as grazing for his animals and as space for threshing and storage, copying into the kanunname the words of the decree which they had received in answer to their query on this subject: ‘it is not forbidden for a peasant to leave a few dönüms of land fallow as pasture for the needs of a yoke of oxen and for a threshing floor’. 14 The compilers of the c. kanunname copied this clause verbatim, and it reappears in a number of provincial codes.15
TITLE TO THE LAND Tapu A new entrant to a çift acquired title – tapu – to the land by paying an entry fee to the fief-holder, the link between title and payment becoming so strong that the term tapu usually came to denote the fee rather than the title. Not all property was subject to tapu. Buildings, vines and cultivated trees were private property. Fief-holders therefore awarded title to open fields, but not to buildings, vineyards or orchards. Remove the buildings, vines or trees, however, or run a plough through an orchard, and the soil reverted to its srcinal status as tapu land. Nonetheless, some categories of open land were exempt from allocation by tapu. The kanunname forbids the appropriation of land used for common grazing: ‘since it is harmful to the public to sow, fence in or give by tapu meadows which serve as grazing land for the townsmen and villagers’ animals, these things have been forbidden’.16 The same clause appears infor theYeni general of c. and provincial codes, kanunname the I.l applying the prohibition alsoin tolater the land ‘in front of a kanunname person’s house’.17 The question of how far the ‘front of a house’ could extend did not, however, receive an answer until the following century, when the jurisconsult ( mufti) Mehmed Baha’i (d. ) and, following him, the New Kanunname, ruled that it should occupy no more than half a dönüm.18 The exemption from tapu also applied to the hassa. This was a çift reserved for the fief-holder himself, who, in principle, could not allocate it to anybody else. The basic rule appeared in the kanunname for Bolu: ‘çifts recorded in the register as hassa may not be given by tapu’. The rule, however, was not absolute. An additional clause gives the fief-holder the right to award title to the çift, but for no longer than the period of his tenure of the fief.19 A similar rule in the kanunname for Sofia allocates natural water meadows and reed beds as hassa to the fief-holder, giving him the right to grant them by tapu during the period of his own tenure only.20
The level of tapu tax The rate of tapu tax was the amount that ‘unprejudiced persons determined’, this formula applying universally until , when a decree established that the fee payable for a çift which passed to a daughter, brother or sister by inheritance was the value of one year’s produce of the land.21 The compilers of the kanunname for the Morea reduced this rate by fixing the fee at the value of the annual produce of the land less the value of the one-seventh tithe due to the fief-holder. Anyone other than a
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daughter, brother or sister of the deceased continued to pay what ‘unprejudiced persons’ estimated.22 On the insecure borderlands of the empire, however, it was difficult to reach a consensus on the level of the fee, and it was this uncertainty that persuaded the surveyors in Bosnia, on the military frontier with the Habsburgs, to fix the rate of tapu tax in the s, not by seeking expert opinion, but instead by holding an auction among bidders for the land.23 In contrast to what was due for agricultural land, the tapu tax payable for houses was fixed. While houses themselves were private property, the land beneath them was not, and anyone building a house paid tapu tax for the site at a rate already in force in the first half of the fifteenth century and specified in the kanunname ‘of Mehmed II’: ‘ground tapu, for the site of a house: maximum, akçes; below this, or akçes; if [the person] is poor, or akçes’.24 The general kanunname of – repeats the tariff, but adds that it does not apply if a person builds on land which he already holds by tapu ‘because it is as if he were building on private property’.25 A later decree laid out the regulations in more detail. Before building a house, a person had to seek permission from the fief-holder. If he did not, the fief-holder could either demolish the house or grant tapu for the site at the standard rate. However, no tapu tax was due if the house was on the site of an old building which had fallen into disrepair. On some new houses, however, the decree imposed a new charge. If a person built on agricultural land, he became liable to a rent equivalent to the tax that he would have paid on the field if it had remained under cultivation, allowing the fief-holder to take an annual income from houses which – in most cases – would be on land which the builder already held by tapu and so exempt from tapu tax for the site. It was this law that was to appear in the New Kanunname in the s.26
TENURE ON THE LAND The consequence of neglect No one enjoyed absolute security of tenure on the land. A person lost his çift if he failed to pay his taxes or if he left it uncultivated, the basic rule appearing already in the kanunname for Hüdavendigar: if lands which are suitable for farming remain fallow when there is no hindrance [to cultivation], and if this would be harmful to the fief, then in order to alleviate the harm, it is permissible by custom to take them from the occupant and give them to someone else by tapu.27 The of c. copies this clause, but replaces thefief’ vague stipulation kanunname that general the occupant loses the land ‘if this would be harmful to the with a precise regulation. It is ‘land that remains uncultivated for three years’ that is subject to confiscation. This rule remained in force until the nineteenth century, but with some qualifications over time, the Hüdavendigar kanunname already making an exception for ‘mountainous and uncultivated lands or land subject to flooding, which cannot be farmed every year’.28 This exemption became generally applicable, but, as the kanunname for Kütahya stipulates, a farmer might still lose the land if he failed more than once to sow crops in years when it was cultivable.29
— The law of the land —
The three-year rule also applied to wasteland which a person intended to clear. If this lay outside the boundaries of a fief, he had an unrestricted right of occupancy until the moment of a new tax census, when the surveyor would register the land and allocate it to a fief. If, at the end of three years, the occupant still had not cleared the land, the fief-holder could reallocate it by tapu. If, on the other hand, the land due for clearance lay within the boundaries of a fief, the three-year period began from the moment of occupancy. If the occupant had cleared it within three years, he received title, but, if not, the fief-holder could reallocate it to someone else. If the occupant had cleared the land without the fief-holder’s permission, the fief-holder could remove him at any time, although the law enjoined – but did not oblige – him to grant title to the occupant as a reward for his efforts. The rules for occupancy of wasteland became more stringent in the late sixteenth century, with an addition to the standard threeyear rule: ‘in mountainous lands . . . the “no obstacle” restriction does not apply’. In other words, the occupant of wasteland would lose title if he did not cultivate it within three years, whether or not he had a valid excuse for not doing so.30 The peasant who faced eviction for neglecting hisçift nonetheless had a residual claim to the land. In a refinement to the three-year ur le, the kanunname for Aydın states: ‘if the holder of the land once again pays thetapu [tax] which an outsider would pay, the timar-holder should once again allocate [theçift] to him and not to anybody else’.31 This became a general although not a universal rule. A mid-sixteenth-century statute from Karaman requires the fief-holder to give due warning before expelling a person who has neglected his tenement for three years, but without, apparently, requiring him to pay tapu tax if he wishes to be reinstated. He simply has to resume cultivation. The statute further restricts the fief-holder’s powers by requiring any reallocation of the land to be ‘with the cognizance of thekadi’.32 The kanunname for Silistre similarly enjoins the fief-holder to ‘warn’ the negligent farmer after three years, but does not explicitly require him to pay tapu tax if he wishes to keep his çift.33 In the seventeenth century, the compilers of the NewKanunname adopted the rule as it appeared in the kanunname for Aydın in , their formulation implying that after three years of neglect a çift becomes automatically vacant, but that the previous – neglectful – occupant has the right of first refusal when the fief-holder wishes to reassign the land.34 In answering the question as to whether a person loses his çift when he leaves it in the safekeeping of another, who then fails to till the soil for three years, they cite a law which appears in an early seventeenth-century collection of statutes attributed to the nişancı Celalzade (d. ): the fief-holder should reallocate the land, regardless of whether or not the srcinal occupant had left it in the safekeeping of another person.35 A related question concerned lands left uncultivated by a missing person. In a petition to the throne elicited the decree that, if there was no news of a person after three years, fief-holder should reallocate theyear. land.Soon Thisafterwards, remained the law until , when then a newthe decree reduced the period to one a counterpetition complained that the one-year period was too short, and a new decree reinstated the three-year rule, which remained in place for inclusion in the New Kanunname.36
Double taxation Çifts often lay uncultivated when their occupants left them to work the land in other places, raising the problem of whether they should pay their taxes to the fief-holders
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with whom they were registered or to the fief-holders on whose land they now worked. This issue appears already in the kanunname ‘of Mehmed II’, which rules: if a peasant possesses land, but leaves the land . . . uncultivated and instead sows on another fief-holder’s land, he should pay tithe twice: once for the land which he sows and once for the land which he has left uncultivated. But if the fief-holder has no land to give the peasant and he sows somewhere else, he should give the tithe, according to custom, only to the [fief-holder on whose] land he is settled. 37 38
The kanunname for Hüdavendgar reiterated this rule, which then became general, and later kanunnames stipulated that the first fief-holder cannot take an extra tithe if the farmer cultivates a new plot of land only as extra labour after he has completed work on his srcinal çift. This is the law that appears in the New Kanunname.39 In addition to a second tithe, anyone who abandoned his çift in order to farm in another place had to continue paying çift tax on his srcinal tenement. However, the question remained of who paid the çift tax when a peasant left his village, leaving someone else to cultivate his land. Different laws, it seems, applied in different regions. In Diyarbekir and Mosul, it was the person who actively worked the land who paid both the tithe and the çift tax.40 However, according to the kanunname for Silistre, the person in whose name the çift was registered remained liable for çift tax, even when another person farmed it and paid the tithes.41
Abandoned land The law required peasants who abandoned their land in order to take up a trade to continue paying taxes to their fief-holders, a statute governing the payment due from a person who takes up the carrying trade appearing already in the kanunname ‘of Mehmed II’: ‘if a person who hires out pack-animals, or a carter who is a carter by trade, abandons his çift . . ., he should carry salt and other items for his fief-holder and pay him akçes per year’.42 The akçes is evidently compensation for loss of the tithes and the corvée a substitute for the çift tax. The corvée is an archaic feature, absent from later statutes, but the notion that akçes was the rate of compensation due for loss of tithes lingered. In parts of early sixteenth-century Rumeli (the Ottoman Balkans), the çift-breaker’s tax payable for abandoning the land was akçes, the sum comprising akçes compensation for the loss of tithes plus akçes for the loss of ispence (a tax of akçes payable by Christian households). The rate was not, however, uniform. The kanunname for Silistre puts the çift-breaker’s tax at akçes for a Muslim and akçes for a Christian, fixing the rate compounding, for Muslims, s in lieu tithes akçe s in lieu of çift taxbyand, for Christians, lieuakçe of tithes andof s in lieu of ispence .43 akçes in akçeand 44 In neighbouring Sofia, by contrast, the rate in was only akçes. In Srem to the west of Belgrade it was higher, the differential rates of and akçes applying respectively to rich and poor rather than to Muslim and Christian. 45 In the midcentury the rate increased. A statute attributed to Celalzade raises the rate to akçes for a whole çift, akçes for half a çift, and akçes for less than half, justifying the increase with a statement that the flight of peasants from the land to engage in trade or commerce had harmed the income of fiefs. 46
— The law of the land —
A decree of , compelling fugitive peasants to return to their villages following the defeat of the celalis, confirmed the rate of the çift-breaker’s tax at , and akçes ‘according to the ancient law’, stipulating that, although no arrears were due, this was to be an annual tax.47 This was the law that w as to pass into the New Kanunname, whose compilers also dispelled the misapprehension that çift-breaker’s tax was payable only by Christians: ‘concerning the law of the çift-breaker: Muslim peasants are also included’.48
Poverty, old age and infirmity
The double tithe and the çift-breaker’s tax applied to the able-bodied, but not when it was poverty, old age, illness or a natural disaster that had forced a peasant from the land. The kanunname for Hüdavendigar already states that it is ‘a blatant injustice’ to take çift tax from a person who has lost his land in this way. A statute in the general kanunname of c . refined the law by ruling that, in these circumstances, the fief-holder should confiscate the abandoned çift and re-register the incapacitated peasant as landless, and so liable for a lower rate of tax.49 The rule was probably universally applicable. In the province of Diyarbekir, however, peasants who had abandoned their çifts through poverty or natural disaster were liable both to the tax due from the landless and to ırgadiye, srcinally a corvée but often commuted for cash. This rule appears in a kanunname of 50 and was copied into the later kanunname for Mosul.51 More important, however, than the imposition of ırgadiye was the condition – absent from the kanunname of c. – that the fief-holder could not remove the incapacitated peasant from his çift before a period of three years had elapsed. In other words, the normal rules for confiscating a çift after it had lain idle for three years applied also in this case.
Forced resettlement The aim of the çift-breaker’s tax was to ensure that the fief-holder did not suffer a loss of income when a peasant abandoned his çift. A set of regulations requiring the fiefholder to bring back and resettle fugitive peasants served the same purpose. The kanunname for Hüdavendigar already states that it is ‘ancient law to bring back and resettle local peasants who have dispersed’, adding that it was forbidden to remove peasants who had left their land for more than fifteen years. These, it is implied, and later kanunnames state more explicitly, should pay taxes to the holder of the fief where they now lived. In answering the question of what should happen to peasants who had settled in towns, the compilers of the kanunname quoted a decree issued in response to their query, which ruled that, after they had been resident for more than fifteen years, they were to be registered as townsmen.52 The same rule reappears in the general kanunname of c., which reduces the residence requirement for registration as a townsman to ten years, and adds that change of status was possible only ‘if [the settler] is not recorded in the register of peasants’.53 These rules remained in force throughout the sixteenth century. The kanunname for Vize, for example, states that, if a peasant had been absent for more than ten years and his çift remained uncultivated, he should pay çift-breaker’s tax, but that if he
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had been absent for less than ten years, his fief-holder should bring him back ‘with the cognizance of the kadi’.54 However, details of the regulations vary. One recension of the kanunname of – gives a ten-year residence requirement for settlers in villages and a twenty-year period for settlers in towns before they could be registered as townsmen. This was unless they had settled in Istanbul: the code forbids the removal of migrants to the capital.55 Another recension of this kanunname, by contrast, requires a delay of ‘ten or fifteen years’ before a peasant is safe from removal from a village and of fifteen years if he has settled in a town. A marginal note, however, emends this rule: ‘the son of a registered peasant is a peasant. He does not escape this status by being 56
registered in a town’. It is nevertheless questionable whether these rules were practical. They do not appear in seventeenth-century formulations of the law, suggesting that after they went into abeyance.
THE TRANSFER OF LAND Priority When a peasant died without heirs and there was more than one applicant for his çift, the question could arise as to whether an applicant from within his village had priority 57 over an outsider. The general kanunname of – gives precedence to the insider, . but this rule was unknown to the compilers of the kanunname for Yeni Il, who clearly believed the opposite: ‘on the question of lands which are subject to tapu, it is forbidden to discriminate between an insider and an outsider’.58 In the seventeenth century the chief Yahya ), on thethe strength of a decree, settled the matter mufti to by permitting villagers take (d. back land which fief-holder had allocated by tapu to an outsider,59 and this was the rule that was to appear in the New Kanunname: if a person dies . . . leaving no heirs . . . his lands should be given to members of the village who are in need of lands and meadows and are applying for tapu. It is against the law to give them to an outsider. Only if there were no applicants from the village could the land go to a stranger.
Sale The sale of çifts raised problems. Unrestricted sales could upset the political order by allowing land to accumulate in the wrong hands, and sale itself presented a legal conundrum. Peasants did not own their çifts, and so, in principle, could not sell them. In practice they did, and the law had to accommodate the fact. The sale of land became an issue during the reign of Bayezid II. A decree of rules that ‘sale and purchase of land are forbidden by custom (‘urf )’,60 and a kanunname for Aydın from the same period similarly outlaws the practice. The prohibition, however, is only apparent, as the clause in the kanunname continues by laying down the conditions which the parties must observe if the sale is to be valid: ‘[The transaction] is permissible if, with the cognizance of the fief-holder, [the buyer] pays a sum for the right of residence. The fief-holder takes one-tenth of the price which [the vendor]
— The law of the land —
receives’.61 The same formula appears in several local codes and in some recensions of the general kanunname. It solved two problems. By requiring the ‘cognizance’ of the fief-holder, it ensured that transfers of land did not slip out of control, and it solved the problem of how peasants could buy and sell land which they did not own by defining the object of the sale as the ‘right of residence’ on the land, rather than the land itself. The kanunnames also imply that title to the land passed to the buyer on payment of the price for the ‘right of residence’, and that the tithe which the fief-holder levied on the price was compensation for the loss of the tapu tax which he would have received had he granted title to the vacant çift. Evidently, few people observed these regulations, and the issue arose again in about , when, in reply to a questioner who stated that kadis in Rumeli were granting certificates confirming sales of land, the chief mufti Ebussuud declared that all certificates which described these transactions as ‘sale’ were void. He objected not to the transactions themselves but to the terminology: ‘it is absolutely contrary to the shari‘a for kadis to define the giving and receiving [of land] by the peasants as “sale” and to issue certificates [accordingly]’.62 This prohibition created the problem of how to define these transactions if they were not ‘sales’. Ebussuud’s solution was to invent a new terminology. In place of ‘sale’, he instructed kadis to use the term tefviz, meaning ‘consignment’. The usefulness of this word was that, while it carried the idea of ‘transfer’, it was not a technical term in the Islamic law of sale and was therefore available to describe transfers of çifts. Its adoption allowed Ebussuud to devise a new formula which he instructed kadis to use when registering these transactions: ‘X, with the permission of the fief-holder, received so-and-so many akçes from Y and transferred (tefviz) the use of his land to him. The fief-holder also gave the tapu to him’.63 This formula avoided the term ‘sale’ and made it clear that what was being transferred was the exploitation of the land and not the soil itself. The use of the term tefviz to denote a transfer of land continued in legal vocabulary into the seventeenth century and, through its adoption by the compilers of the New Kanunname, into the nineteenth. It was not Ebussuud’s only innovation. He also abolished the tithe on the purchase price, instead making it a condition that the fief-holder grant the purchaser the tapu to the land: if someone wishes to vacate the land which he occupies and, with the cognizance of the fief-holder, gives a sum of akçes for the right of residence and if, when he vacates it, the fief-holder gives that person [the land] by tapu, this is canonical and accepted.64 In making transfers invalid unless the fief-holder specifically granted title, Ebussuud hoped to maintain control over the occupancy of land. He probably also intended the purchaser to pay tapu tax, with this payment replacing the tithe levied on transfers. This did not happen. Instead, it became the practice to pay the fief-holder for permission to transfer the land, raising the question of whether it was the ‘purchaser’ or the ‘vendor’ who paid – a problem which Yahya settled by confirming that it was the purchaser.65 What he paid, however, was no longer understood as a tithe, the early seventeenth-century mufti Pir Mehmed (d.) stating outright: ‘in [the matter of giving] permission [to transfer land] and [granting] tapu, it is unheard of to take a
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tithe’. What an entrant to vacant land paid was tapu tax, while what a purchaser paid was a fee for permission to transfer the occupancy to himself, at a rate ‘that is deemed reasonable . . . to satisfy the fief-holder’.66 The compilers of the New Kanunname adopted these rules, adding insistently that tefviz was invalid without the explicit permission of the fief-holder.
Inheritance by sons Çifts passed directly and unconditionally from father to son. The same rule applied, even when the son was a minor. A clause in the kanunname for Hüdavendgar outlined the procedure to be followed:
tapu [tax] for an orphan is a rejected and prohibited innovation. His father’s land is treated as if it were his inherited property. If the land descending from his father remains uncultivated, it should be given to another person, and if, on reaching maturity, the orphan demands it back, it is once again assigned to the orphan.67 Despite the law, the practice of reassigning orphans’ land by tapu continued. A clause in the Aydın kanunname repeats the prohibition, requiring tapu-holders to vacate the land when the orphan reclaims it, and to seek reimbursement for the tapu tax from the fief-holder.68 The same clause reappears in the general kanunname of –, which also places a limit of ten years from puberty during which the orphan must claim his inheritance,69 a rule that was to remain in place for inclusion in the New Kanunname.70 If the deceased left several sons, these could inherit his çift as a jointly held tenement. The kanunname ruled that, even if one of the sons appeared in the register as the holder of the çift and the others as landless, they in fact held the çift jointly, and should divide the tax equitably among themselves. 71 Later kanunnames repeat this ruling, but do not address the problem of whether the brothers held the title to the land collectively, or whether each one held title to his own portion. This became an issue when one of the brothers died. If they held the title collectively, the surviving brothers would automatically acquire the deceased’s share of the land, and before the early sixteenth century this was the usual pattern. However, in about , the grand vezir Hersekzade Ahmed Paşa ruled that, when brothers held a çift jointly, each one should hold title separately for his own portion. Consequently, if one of them died, the survivors could take over his portion only on payment of the tapu tax. Nonetheless, they retained a prior claim to the land. The fief-holder could give the land to an outsider 72
only if the brothers could or immediate renounced it voluntarily. Hersekzade’s ruling didnot notpay gain currency. A recension of the general kanunname, copied in , repeats the law allowing brothers to hold title collectively, but a marginal note attributed to Celalzade comments: ‘this is wrong. The fief-holder seeks tapu [tax] from his brothers’ – bringing the law into line with Hersekzade’s amendment.73 Nonetheless, uncertainty continued. In the first decade of the seventeenth century, Pir Mehmed ruled that, when two brothers held property jointly, a fief-holder could not demand that the survivor pay tapu tax for his deceased brother’s share. Elsewhere, on the strength of a decree of , he states the opposite, suggesting
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that the issue had again become contentious, until finally a decree settled the issue in favour of Hersekzade’s srcinal law. 74 If one of the brothers occupying a çift died leaving a son, the son inherited his share of the land without paying tapu tax, a rule which appears already in the kanunname of Aydın from the reign of Bayezid II.75
Inheritance by brothers and grandsons If the holder of a çift died without leaving a son, certain of the deceased’s relatives, provided they paid the tapu tax, could inherit the land. Before , the fief-holder should first of all offer the land to his brother – the term ‘brother’, Hersekzade explained, applying only to full brothers or to half-brothers sharing a father. 76 This remained the rule into the seventeenth century, the compilers of the New Kanunname stating that, ‘in matters of tapu’, the term ‘brother’ applied without distinction to full brothers or to brothers sharing the same father. Half-brothers sharing a mother were legally not brothers.77 The rules governing inheritance by grandsons changed during the sixteenth century. Hersekzade stated that, provided his father was no longer alive, a grandson could inherit a çift from his grandfather without payment, a rule that appeared in the general kanunname of –. However, Celalzade’s marginal note in the kanunname states bluntly: ‘land does not descend from grandfather to grandson’, adding that the rule applying to brothers applies also to grandsons: if the grandson pays tapu tax, the fiefholder should not give the land to anybody else.78 It was Celalzade’s ruling that was to survive into the seventeenth century, when it was incorporated into the New Kanunname with the proviso that a grandson must claim the land within a time limit of ten years from his grandfather’s death.79
Inheritance by daughters Before , women could not legally occupy land in their own right. Nonetheless, the kanunname for Hüdavendigar and later codes stated that a fief-holder could not expel a woman provided she kept her land under cultivation and paid her taxes. 80 The assumption was that any woman in this position would be a widow, but in emending the relevant clause, which, in one recension of the kanunname of c ., opens with the phrase ‘if a woman on her husband’s land does not leave [the fields] uncultivated . . .’,81 to read ‘if a woman, by some means or other, occupies land . . .’, the redactors of the kanunname of – accepted that widowhood was not the only way for women to acquire land.82 Nonetheless, the administration tried to curtail women’s access to the land. The kanunname of – copies a clause from a group of western Anatolian kanunnames of forbidding women from acquiring çifts by paying tapu tax. This prohibition, as the kanunnname for Çemişgezek makes clear,83 applied to both widows and daughters. A further restriction followed in , when a decree forbade daughters from acquiring shares in çifts by becoming partners with their brothers. 84 The law allowed one exception to this rule. To the clause in the kanunname of – barring daughters from inheriting land, Celalzade added this comment:
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if the deceased person cleared the land with his own axe and, in short, expended cash and effort, and if he died leaving no son or brother, but leaving a daughter, it is now commanded that it should be given to his daughter. 85 The new law – probably dating from thes – stipulated nonetheless that, in order to acquire the land, the daughter should pay tapu tax. A major change followed in , when, for the first time, a decree allowed ‘the lands of a deceased person who leaves no son to be given to his daughters who are requesting them, for the tapu [tax] which disinterested Muslims determine’.86 This was to raise two problems. First, the decree placed no time limit on daughters’ claims, with the result that some demanded their inheritance many years after their father’s death, when the land had already been reallocated several times. In , a decree following a petition put a limit of ten years from the death of the father.87 The second question was whether, and on what terms, the daughter’s own children could inherit from their mother, the assumption from being that a son could inherit without paying tapu tax and that a daughter could inherit on payment of the fee. In , however, a decree stipulated that land could descend to sons only on payment of tapu tax, raising the question of whether this applied also to daughters. The answer came in an order issued at some time before : ‘the deceased [mother]’s vacant land descends by tapu, [and] only to her son’.88
Inheritance by sisters, fathers and mothers In , a decree extended the right of inheritance to a deceased man’s sister, provided that she paid tapu tax and was living in his place of residence. In the following year a petitioner asked for the residence requirement to be lifted, eliciting a decree which modified the srcinal law by restricting inheritance to sisters living ‘in the region’. 89 In another decree, again in answer to a petition, extended the right of inheritance to the deceased’s parents: it has been decreed that if the deceased leaves no son, daughter, or brother with whom he shares a father, but leaves a father and a mother, all his lands and meadows should be given to his father for the tapu tax which disinterested Muslims determine. If he leaves no father, they should all be given to his mother.90 Between and , therefore, a series of decrees had extended the right to inheritpiecemeal, land to family members other thanasons changesOnly had occurred but nonetheless followed seriesand of brothers. consistentThe principles. sons could inherit without paying tapu tax. Males took precedence over females in the same degree of relationship, and descent was patrilineal. The changes had created a hierarchy among the heirs and, with it, the need for a concise statement of the rules. The task of providing one fell to the nişancı Okçuzade, who, in , at the request of the mufti Yahya, summarized the laws of inheritance. It was Okçuzade’s summary which appeared in the New Kanunname:
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the deceased’s vacant lands are given by tapu to his daughter; if he has no [daughter], to his brother with whom he shares a father; if he has no [brother with whom he shares a father], to his sister resident in the [same] place; if he has no [sister resident in the same place], to his father; if he has no [father], to his mother . . . A deceased man’s land descends without tapu only to his son. 91
CONCLUSION The laws of land tenure served two purposes. The first was to keep revenues flowing by ensuring that the land remained under continuous cultivation; the second, by controlling access to the land, was to prevent the growth of large private estates which would have diverted the revenues to private owners. The fundamental principles of the law remained intact between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, the major change being the extension, after , of the right to inherit land to family members other than sons and brothers, and to women in particular. It was evidently demography that forced the change. Before , the population had been growing and there was no shortage of men to till the soil. However, during the wars and rebellions of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, there was a flight of men from the land, and it was to ensure that the deserted çifts would not lie idle that the administration legalized their descent to the daughters, sisters and parents of the deceased.
Postcript
Who owned the land? The question of who owned the land itself did not arise until the s. Following the annexation of central Hungary as an Ottoman province in , the kazasker of Rumeli, Ebussuud, provided a statement on the laws of land tenure that were to apply in the newly acquired territory. His statement not only gives a summary of the rules of land tenure, but attempts to do so within a framework of Islamic law which treats land as a commodity that can be held as private property. Ebussuud therefore faced the problem of deciding who actually owned the land. His solution was to fix ownership in the treasury, using the formula ‘the real substance of the land is the Treasury of the Muslims’.92 In Islamic legal theory, the ‘Treasury of the Muslims’ is the joint property of the Muslim community. The compilers of the New Kanunname in the s adopted Ebussuud’s statement as the basic document on land law. Elsewhere, however, they make the contradictory statement: ‘ miri land’ – that is, land which was not controlled by a trust or by a private owner – ‘is the sultan’s’.93 However, both they and Ebussuud are careful to avoid using any technical term which would imply that either the treasury or the sultan held the land as private property. They indicate ‘ownership’ by the simple use of the Turkish possessive genitive, which is legally non-specific. In reality, the question of ownership of the land was irrelevant. The important issue was who controlled the land or, more specifically, its revenues.
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Postscript
From the Corpus Juris Civilis to the New Kanunname Although the Ottoman land regime developed over the centuries to meet changing needs, its basic principles remained intact, and these, it is clear, were an inheritance from pre-Ottoman times whose distant srcins are plain. In the fifth century , Roman jurists faced the problem of describing a type of contract which transferred land to be enjoyed in perpetuity by a tenant and his heir or assignee, that this he continue to pay of rent toor theofowner. When the jurists were unableprovided to decideonly whether was a contract hire sale, the Emperor Zeno established it as an independent contract under the name emphyteusis.94 It was a contract whose terms conform exactly to the conditions of peasant tenure in the Ottoman empire. In the following century, the Emperor Justinian refined the law by decreeing that, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, the owner could eject the emphyteutical 95 tenant if he failed to pay the rent for three consecutive years. The same rule was to apply to Ottoman peasants. Similarly, the distinction in Ottoman law between fruittrees, vines and buildings, which could be held as private property, and the soil itself, which could not, seems also to date from the time of Justinian. It was this emperor who decreed that an emphyteutical tenant could, provided he had received permission from the owner, sell any improvements which he had made to the land.96 Since it is impractical to sell improvements to the soil itself, this rule could apply only to things above the soil, most obviously to fruit-trees, vines and buildings. Since Justinian still requires the tenant to obtain the permission of the owner of the land before selling the improvements, these are not yet in the fullest sense the tenant’s private property as they were later to become in Ottoman law. Nonetheless, the separation in Ottoman law between the soil itself and things above the soil clearly has its srcin in Justinian’s ruling. It is possible also that the Ottomans inherited two further rules of late Roman law. First, when an Ottoman peasant sold his right to occupy a çift, his fief-holder levied a charge, fixed officially at one-tenth of the price realized. This seems to reflect a late Roman practice: Justinian attempted to curb abuses by landowners by limiting the sum which they could collect when an emphyteutical tenant transferred his land to another party, to one-fiftieth of its price or valuation.97 Second, Ottoman law required a new entrant to a çift to pay an entry fee to the fief-holder. From the late fourth century , Roman law required a tenant who obtained land on the imperial domain by emphyteutical right to furnish sureties against the land being abandoned. 98 By Ottoman times, this payment had lost its character as a security, but the principle that occupancy of the land was conditional on the payment of an entry fee remained in place. The Roman contract of emphyteusis, with some variation in its precise form, survived in the Byzantine empire and its successor states down to the Palaiologan era. 99 It is this contract that the Ottomans inherited and which was to become the basic form of peasant tenure in the Ottoman empire. It was the contract, in its Ottoman guise, that Ebussuud was to describe in summary in the s and which the New Kanunname of the s was to regulate in detail, more than a millennium after Justinian had laid out the basic rules in the Corpus Juris Civilis.
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NOTES
See Postscript , p. . See Postscript , p. . Barkan : no. ; Kraelitz-Greifenhorst [–] . Facsimile of Koyunogˇlu MS, in Akgündüz –: II, –. Heyd : –. Barkan : . Akgündüz –: II, . MTM : . Barkan : Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Akgündüz –: II, . Barkan : . Ibid.: . MTM : . Barkan : . Ibid.: . MTM : . Barkan : . Ibid.: , . Ibid.: ; Kraelitz-Greifenhorst [–] : , . Tuncer : . MTM : –. Barkan : . Ibid. Ibid.: . Imber . Barkan : . Ibid.: . Ibid.: . MTM : . Ibid. Ibid.: –. Barkan : –; Kraelitz-Greifenhorst [–] : –. Barkan : . MTM : . Barkan : , . Ibid.: . Ibid.: ; Kraelitz-Greifenhorst [–] : , .
Barkan : . VI, . Akgündüz –: Barkan , no./: . Akgündüz –: VII, . MTM : . Ibid.: . Akgündüz –: II, . Barkan : . Ibid.: . Ibid.: .
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Akgündüz –: II, . Barkan : . Akgündüz –: IV, . Ibid.: IV, –. Ibid.: III, . Barkan : . MTM : . S¸ahin and Emecen : . Akgündüz –: II, . MTM : .
Ibid. : . Barkan MTM : . Ibid.: . Barkan : . Ibid.: . Akgündüz –: III, . MTM : . Barkan : . Akgündüz –: II, –. Ibid.: III, . MTM : . Akgündüz –: II, . Ibid.: II, . MTM : . Akgündüz –: III, . MTM : .
Barkan : Arif : .. Akgündüz –: III, . Barkan : . Ibid.: ; Beldiceanu and Beldiceanu-Steinherr : ; MTM : . Akgündüz –: III, . MTM : . Ibid. Ibid.: . Ibid.: –. Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Barkan : . MTM : . Justinian : . Corpus [] : XIII, . Ibid.: XIII, –.
Ibid.: XIII, . Ibid.: III, . Weiss ; Zakythinos : –.
CHAPTER FOUR
A KADI COURT IN THE BALKANS Sofia in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
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I
t is virtually impossible to overestimate the importance of kadı courts in provincial life in the pre-tanzimat period. This was an institution with which for a variety of reasons nearly everyone in the Ottoman empire came into contact – Muslims, Jews or Christians, reaya or askeri, villagers or urbanites, tribes, visitors from abroad and individuals, as well as groups with different professional, religious or social profiles. Kadıs were approached either as judges or as the local administrative representative of Ottoman authority in the respective district, or both, as these functions were closely intertwined. In the past forty years, much has been written on the institution and its (mainly judicial) activities, for various parts of the empire and vis-à-vis various groups of Ottoman society.1 However, many of its local specifics, its evolution over time, and its relation with other Ottoman institutions of authority and with local populations have yet to be studied and interpreted, and these continue to attract scholarly attention. While the number of publications on the functioning of the court in the seventeenth century increases, with regard to the Balkans, publications dedicated to the earlier centuries are practically non-existent, and those for the eighteenth century are still relatively few. This essay provides an overview of the role, functions and structure of the kadı court, taking the example of Sofia during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It shows the kadı court as a judicial institution but also one at the heart of the administration of Rumeli, a centre of social life and public space where all types of Ottoman society met. In many respects, therefore, this study presents the principal features of kadı courts throughout the empire. However, it is difficult to describe the kadı in Sofia during thisplace period as entirely typical. This is duewithin partly to the of process ofcourt transformation taking during the seventeenth century most the
so-called classical Ottoman institutions, and for the Ottoman polity in general, and partly to the fact that Sofia was the seat of the governor of Rumeli. The latter obviously added to the usual obligations of a kadı, putting him in the precarious position of ranking highly in the judicial hierarchy, but at the same time being exposed to the direct effect of the vali’s presence. This largely explains some of the discernible specifics of the kadı court in Sofia.2
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SEVENTEENTHCENTURY
KADI S OF SOFIA
By the first decade of the seventeenth century the kadılik of Sofia had been permanently integrated into the mevleviyet (higher) grade of the judicial hierarchy – indicative of its growing importance. Sofian kadıs srcinated from all parts of the empire, including Baghdad, Jerusalem, Ayntab, Bursa, Crimea, Georgia, Istanbul, Edirne and Sofia itself. Some belonged to eminent ulema families, others had strong ties with dervish brotherhoods – sometimes both – but there are also striking exceptions to this model – men of very modest background. Most followed the established pattern of career-building. Before becoming a judge they would have normally taught at highranked medreses (colleges of Islamic law), though rarely at the Süleymaniye in Istanbul or in other major colleges of comparable importance. Others, however, had only a very brief teaching career, often in lower level medreses. The Sofia mevleviyet was somewhere in the middle to lower ranks of this judicial grade, but apparently was a lucrative position. Not a single seventeenth-century Sofia kadı became kadıasker, although one fifteenth-century kadı became grand vezir (Piri Mehmed Paşa, d. , who was kadı in Sofia before ). The normal positions a kadı would attain before and after Sofia were those in Diyarbakır, Kayseri, Manisa, Belgrade, Bosna Saray (Sarajevo) and, in exceptional cases, Baghdad, Filibe (Plovdiv) and Izmir.3 The majority of seventeenth-century sharia judges in Sofia had very short terms in office, from just over two years down to two to three months, with the average about a year. Several spent more than one incumbency and hence more years in Sofia; some chose to retire there, others died while in post.4 In contrast to sixteenth-century kadıs, who left a lasting trace both in the topography of the city and in the memory of their fellow few not seventeenth-century judges anyarepersonal with thecitizens, city. They only donated less to localdeveloped welfare, they also notrelationship mentioned in Christian texts surviving from the period. 5 The latter might be due to the lack of major clashes between Muslims and non-Muslims comparable to those of the neomartyrs in the sixteenth century in which the kadıs played a major role.6 Although the seventeenth century was far from peaceful, the spectacular events in the life of Sofians – destruction of churches in the s and s,7 the banishment of local prostitutes and even, ‘by leave of the sharia and for the reform of the world’, the hanging of some of them (between December and July ) 8 – were initiated not by the kadı but by the current governor. One kadı challenged the governor who in executed several people in Sofia without the legal sanction of the judge and then tried to secure the latter’s ex-post-facto approval.9 Despite the theoretically important role of the sharia judge in such cases, nowhere in these events, except for that of , does the city kadı appear as a major actor. This can probably be attributed to the growing role of the governor in provincial administration and adjudication at the expense of the judge. THE RANGE OF
KADI
COURT ACTIVITIES
Despite the prominence of the governor, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century the kadı court in Sofia remained a focal public space for its citizens and for the inhabitants of the kaza (judicial district). The kadı constituted one of the pillars of Ottoman authority in the province. The scope of the work of the kadı court can be assessed using the surviving sicills (registers, record books), despite concerns about
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their reliability.10 Principally, registration of documents issued by the kadı or reaching him was not mandatory but depended on a variety of circumstances, including the readiness of the interested party to pay the necessary fee.11 Although registration in the sicill provided security in the case of loss of the srcinal document or the reopening of the case, it was not always resorted to. The same applies also to documents issued by the central authorities, especially those in response to petitions of individuals or groups. One may suspect also specific areas of ‘under-representation’ such as non-Muslims and villagers, who probably approached the court less frequently than did Muslim inhabitants of the city. 12 Nor do the registers include the outgoing corkaza. We only respondence learn about the incoming orders registered in of thethe the records of the(some the from and the şikâyet sicills, from divanof)– this mühimme defters (‘registers of important affairs’, ‘registers of complaints’) kept in the imperial council – or from single documents. Finally, it seems that many courts kept parallel registers – one for general issues, the main judicial and administrative activities of the court, and others more specialized – for example, for vakıf documents,13 for inheritances and related judicial acts (tereke, muhallefat),14 for incoming orders,15 and sometimes for marriage contracts,16 which might cover several judgeships. What survives is often just one of these parallel sicills. Yet, despite these recognized drawbacks, sicills offer a unique insight into the wide scope of kadı court activities and the complex negotiations and relations this implied. They continue to be the most comprehensive source available for study of these activities.
A judicial institution
The kadı court was first of all a judicial institution. All its other functions emanated from its primary and traditional association with adjudication on the basis of the sharia. Its early integration within the Ottoman bureaucracy, and its authorization to apply the kanun and other legal edicts issued by the sultans, further enhanced the court’s role. The Sofia sharia court reached the peak of its importance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but towards the end of the seventeenth century possibly began to become less significant on account of the increasing authority of the provincial governor. This trend continued until the second half of the nineteenth century, when the kadı court returned to being a judicial institution treating mainly the (broadly) religious problems of Muslims. Late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century records attest to the frequent appearance of the provincial governor and his staff at hearings in the Sofia court; the fact of the joint sessions of the kadı with the provincial divan; and the overwhelming presence of the ayan-i vilayet (‘provincial notables’) in the work of the court – as parties in a significant number of cases, as ‘witnesses to the event’ in even more, andrecorded as a forum which on many issues of all-kaza importance, which were then in the .17 sicilldecided In its judicial role, the kadı court functioned in complex interaction with several other institutions which were similarly not exclusively judicial.18 At the highest level, in the heart of the empire, was the imperial divan acting in the name of the sultan. Primarily a political body, it also received applications and grievance petitions from all parts of the empire – from individuals and various communities, Muslims, Christians and Jews, men and women, citizens, villagers and tribesmen – and responded to them, if only to instruct the officials concerned to review the case. Applicants
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complained about the malfunctioning of local administration and oppression and taxation issues, but also about private legal cases related to inheritance, murder, debts, family conflicts, problems among trade partners, or others. Sometimes they approached the divan following an unsatisfactory (from their point of view) decision of the local kadı; on other occasions they simply petitioned the divan. The orders in response, issued in the sultan’s name, are reflected in the mühimme 19 and, after , also in the şikayet20 series of the divan or, from , in the regional ahkam defters.21 Seventeenthcentury mühimme and şikayet registers rarely include more than ten judicial cases per year from Sofia, which suggests that the kadı court remained the focal judicial institution for Sofians, andcourt only interacted a few approached the divan private reasons. cases with Locally, the kadı in a variety of legalforand administrative the governor’s divan, another institution of mazalim jurisdiction in the Ottoman state.22 Cases were sometimes brought first to the vali, where the kadı was also invited, and then to the kadı court, where members of the governor’s retinue participated as ‘witnesses to the event’; sometimes cases went in the opposite direction, first to the kadı and then to the vali; in yet other cases they also reached the central divan, from where they were transferred to the vali. It is not clear whether these were all the cases taken to the governor’s court, and, if not, why the kadı was involved in these in particular or why he would record them. There are indeed many questions around the functioning of the provincial divan and the division of prerogatives and functions with the respective kadı. Surviving registers do not support the obvious hypothesis of a division between sharia and kanun (administrative law) cases: the governor was approached on inheritance disputes and the kadı with grievances about irregularities in the collection of taxes. Much has been written on the attitudes of non-Muslims, mainly Orthodox Christians and Jews, to the kadı court. Scholars who have analysed these on the basis of the kadı sicills are unanimous that members of all non-Muslim communities turned to the kadı court not only for cases that were mandatory (mixed – that is, with Muslims – or criminal), but also in cases regarded as religious (such as marriage and divorce). Some see the explanation for this phenomenon in the actual absence of alternative non-Muslim courts; others indicate the awareness of non-Muslims of the possible advantages that turning to the ‘Muslim’ court would bring them – more favourable stipulations of the law, a higher chance to win their case, a better chance to have the verdict/decision procured, lower fees – which led them to overlook the prohibitions issued by their religious and communal authorities. Although their status was not very clearly defined, non-Muslim religious and communal courts (not necessarily overlapping) did exist and interacted with local kadı courts. Their importance seems to have grown from the seventeenth century onwards as part of a complex evolution of the Ottoman politytaxation. and the 23developing communal structures, especially concerning However,role onlywithin in thethis lateof eighteenth/early nineteenth century did the Ottoman authority officially and explicitly grant the Orthodox religious authorities/communities a sort of monopoly on ‘religious’ cases. But this was never fully enforced, perhaps partly because of the preferences of non-Muslims themselves, who continued to take advantage of more favourable prescriptions of the sharia.24 Even less is known about the communal courts based on ‘customary’ law, which functioned among Orthodox Christians and some groups of Muslims. This is a highly
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controversial issue, in the first place because, with the exception of those in the Aegean islands, they have left documentation only rarely.25 Nationalistic Balkan historiographies have tried to present communal structures as a major alternative to the ‘alien’ courts, which thus contributed to the preservation of the ‘national spirit’. While this is probably an exaggeration, the role of these institutions may not be simply discarded. Their existence is apparent, even where no documents have been preserved, in explaining the relatively low percentage of Christian villagers attending the sharia courts, and probably also the ecclesiastical courts. It is yet another question what law these institutions applied. Very often one may suspect a complex interaction of the dominant 26
sharia, tribalinstitutions, and pagan traditions, pre-Ottoman practices. here, All these and severalcanon otherslawofand lesser importance legal not considered which functioned in a complex interaction and hierarchy, offered many opportunities for ‘forum shopping’ for those concerned, as long as they knew of their specifics and advantages and were prepared to go against prohibitions. 27 For different groups of Ottoman subjects in the kaza of Sofia, it is difficult at this stage to evaluate the respective weight of these judicial institutions. Some kadı sicills are available from the midsixteenth century, but mainly date from the beginning of the seventeenth century and even then with significant gaps. The contemporaneous series of mühimme and şikayet defters, which reflect activities at the imperial divan, also contain significant gaps. The other components of the judicial system – the governor’s divan, the religious courts and the customary law courts – remain an unknown variable for Sofia district in the period under consideration. At this stage we can claim only that they existed. The very low number of court records which involve Jews, Armenians and ‘Latins’ (Ragusans and Catholics) in the kadı sicills of Sofia, in comparison with their relative weight in the city’s population, suggests that the respective communal institutions received some of the obligatory kadı court cases.28 However, the abiding impression is that the kadı court continued to function, as both a legal and an administrative body, as a focus of life for all the groups indicated. The notarial function
What made the kadı court unique, as compared to other official Ottoman judicial institutions, was its notary function. No divan recorded documents of this type. On the other hand, there is sufficient information to show that religious and communal courts did provide these services to their co-religionists, although they were not officially assigned to do this. Notarial documents are recorded in the extant codices of metropolitanates, preserved from the seventeenth century onwards; Jewish responsa also refer to the recording of various agreements and transactions. Bearing in mind the limitations of these courts in serving only thecourt respective group, andconthe undisputed higher security provided by the in thereligious case of subsequent kadı testation and as the court for mixed cases, it is not surprising that the latter contains the bulk of the notary records. In the extant Sofia sicills for the period discussed here, notarial documents make up between and per cent of the legal entries. They include mainly records of debts, contracts for transactions of houses, (work)shops, mills, vineyards or other roofed or landed property, sometimes in places in Anatolia or other distant settlements in Rumeli; transfer of rights of usage of landed plots; loans; suretyships (kefalet); and proxies (vekalet). Only very rarely do we come across records
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of transactions of moveable property, even of relatively expensive items such as slaves or cattle. However, the kadı did issue documents related to the manumission of slaves, conditional or unconditional. Some transactions and agreements were contracted in loco, in the court, while others, probably the majority, seem to have been negotiated outside it and recorded sometimes years later, when one of the parties needed a legal document or when the due sums were fully paid. Very rarely, contracts were registered between a community or mahalle (city quarter) and a person hired to provide certain services. Suretyships were recorded mainly in relation to debts and collective liability, but also when an offender was being released prisonAs and a guarantee wasOttoman needed to ensurevekalet his ors her appearance in court whenfrom required. elsewhere in the empire, were usually registered when a party to a judicial case needed a representative in court or an official, as a deputy to carry out (part of) his or her obligations. The normal case was for a specific vekalet to serve in a strictly determined case, for a clearly specified job, such as a sale or other transaction, or in arranging divorce and post-divorce relations. Muslims and Orthodox Christians (but rarely Jews or Armenians), men and women, appear in court as both the authorizing and the authorized party. Disputes
Contested cases comprise a significant component of the Sofian kadı court’s judicial activities, between and per cent of the legal documents in extant records in this period. These include disputes over landed and other property, or over the borders of a common, between villagers and townsmen. They also include cases concerning the payment of taxes and dues, about their amount and the method of collecting, between tax collectors and taxpayers, or between taxpayers (groups and individuals) only. Closely related to the kadı’s broad prerogatives in the control and regulation of urban economic life is the judge’s role in cases going beyond the competences of the respective guild bodies: disputes between esnafs (artisan guilds); disputes between an esnaf and individual craftsmen who were not its members – or who were, but the offence was beyond their jurisdiction or considered of high public importance; on breaches of production regulations; on provisioning with raw materials; on prices, and conflicts with market officials; and on the way esnafs performed their obligations to the state in peace and war. Marriage and divorce
A significant number of documents recorded in the Sofian sicills concern family rela29
tions. range from registration of an agreement between (former)related spouses and the These allocation of alimony or the appointment of guardians to disputes to inheritance or difficult divorces. The courts issued special permission (nikah tezkere, izinname), bearing the judge’s seal, to couples intending to marry. Such a document informed neighbourhood imams that there were no sharia obstacles to the conclusion of the marriage.30 Marriage contracts (nikah akdi) which fixed the size of the dower due to the wife in the case of the husband’s death or divorce (mehr-i müeccel), and occasionally provide details on specific issues and conditions of cohabitation, are quite
— A kadi court in the Balkans —
rare. Very occasionally, kadıs also registered Christian marriages, perhaps reflecting problems regarding the Christian legalization of the marriage. Documents related to divorce crop up more often. Because of the specifics of Muslim divorce, most divorces registered in court were initiated by the wife (hul divorces), were conditional, or followed some agreement between the spouses. Information about divorce initiated by the husband comes mainly from documents concerning the settlement of disputes between the former spouses. Christians, particularly women, also registered divorce, either directly in the sharia court or after the dissolution of the marriage at the ecclesiastical judicial body. Many questions arise in such cases which for the time being remain speculative: Christians about the and intricacies of Islamichow law;knowledgeable where they learned aboutwere it; whether thestipulations mehr-i müeccel which women demanded in court or which occasionally crop up in terekes were actually pre-arranged and in what format, or were just a strategy after divorce or the death of the husband; what it cost Christian women to raise property claims that fit sharia law but were in contravention of canon law; and so forth.31 Issues of ‘public morality’ of both Muslims and Christians and the marital status of women in particular were under scrutiny, and the court was involved to secure this. Inheritance
According to the Ottoman kanun, in cases when there were no legally recognized heirs, or when their due shares accordingto the sharia were insufficient to exhaust it,agents of the state treasury (beytülmal) were to visit the house of the deceased and decide whether the state had any interest in the estate. Many suchcases would eventually reach the sharia court, at the demand of the agent or if contested by the heirs. Thekadı court intervened when legally recognized heirs were absent, when a wife was pregnant, when there were under-age heirs – in short, when there were ‘weak’ legatees who needed protection. It could also be approached when the heirs could not agree about the division of the estate among themselves or for any other legal problem that arose in relation to it. The court also decided disputes between heirs and agents of the treasury, between heirs and other interested parties, and among heirs only, often caused by transactions effected before the death of the legator. Indeed, eventual problems with thebeytülmal or among heirs may have been the reason for the rather frequent transactions witheal r property between spouses recorded in the kadı sicills. Disputes between manumitted slaves and the heirs of their former masters or the agent of the state treasury were not rare, and this explains the frequency of the requested issuance of relevant documents by manumitted slaves. Anticipated problems with the beytülmal were probably the reason for an otherwise rare practice to which Ottoman subjects resorted only in exceptional circumstances – to declare registerofgifts theirInpotential to indicate names ofresidents the heirsinin front ofand a member the to court. Sofia, thisheirs was or done mostly bythetemporary the town, mainly Armenian merchants. Except for cases of donation for piouspurposes, wills were declared also within the family, in the presence of friends and neighbours and probably also religious functionaries of the respective faith, and only disagreements among the heirs or some transaction would reveal them in the sharia court .32 Although these problems were regarded as a prerogative of the religious courts of each community, we often see members of the non-Muslim communities, mostly Orthodox Christians, settling family problems according to sharia law.
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Criminal cases
Only around per cent of documents in the Sofiakadı sicills relate to criminal cases – principally manslaughter, battery, highway robbery, theft, adultery, burglary, counterfeiting and forgery. Other documents, such as suretyships and divisions of estates, reveal that many other crimes occurred in the district of the Sofia kadı but were not the subject of court intervention. The main reason for this is probably the fact that, in ‘offences against man’, Islamic law leaves much space for negotiation between the parties involved, including reconciliation outside the court. The court was approached usually with regard to potential problems for the territorial community where the crime had taken place, a village or urban neighbourhood whose inhabitants were bound by 33 collective liability and who were held responsible if the culprit remained unknown. In order to avoid protracted litigation and oppression from police officials and the relatives of the victim, even when the culprit was identified, the community still tried to secure a document from the kadı court absolving them from responsibility. This was why the inhabitants of amahalle or village were often the first to inform the sharia judge about a death that was violent or had occurred in unusual circumstances, a suicide or a wounding and to demand an inquiry. Sometimes the victim or his or her relatives stated the fact of the criminal act, or simply of death, thus absolving the community from payment of compensation and occasionally also identifying the culprit. A specific but frequent case is when the inhabitants of a village or neighbourhood sued members of the community, women of easy virtue or bandits, usually demanding their eviction. In such cases the testimony of the community against them was deemed a sufficient proof even when the defendant denied the accusations. Thekadı court tried people accused of highway (aswhose in theclaim cases of immoral behaviour) large groupsrobbery of localwhen people, usually decided the case.charges were raised by A very brief overview and comparison between the early and late sicills does not show any significant shift in the nature of legal cases reaching the kadı court. What does change, however, are the court sessions ( meclis-i şer‘) held in the presence of the vali, in the divan-i Rumeli (council of Rumeli) attended by the kadı of Sofia, but also by a divan efendisi.34 At present it is only possible to say that these ‘elevated’ sessions concerned a wide range of issues and were often either preceded or followed by sessions of the kadı court per se, sometimes supported by emr-i şerif (imperial orders). They concerned problems with the collection of taxes, sometimes for distant villages in the province or following clashes between former vali and the non-Muslims of Sofia.35 Other topics include the contested sale at auction of inherited property between highranking askeri in Sofia, a contested timar in the sancak of Vidin, a trial of slaves who murdered their ağa, and other matters which were probably taken to the vali because of their high ‘public importance’.36 The interaction between the kadı court and the governor’s divan also awaits further investigation. FOUNDATIONS, APPOINTMENTS AND OTHER RELIGIOUS MATTERS
As a judicial and religious authority the sharia court controlled the functioning of the pious foundations (vakıfs), appointments or temporary replacements of Muslim
— A kadi court in the Balkans —
religious functionaries (imam, duaguy, hatib and others), and the various levels of statedefined aspects of the structures of non-Muslim communities. Thus kadıs oversaw the vakıfs – their establishment, financial situation and transactions – the appointment of trustees (mütevelli), and repairs to their material components.37 Mütevellis were also replaced in or through the court, a procedure usually started by the local Muslim community, the immediate recipients of their services. 38 Occasionally problems related to non-Muslim vakıfs were also brought up in the sharia court. The usual documentation in Sofia sicills as far as non-Muslim religions are concerned is registration of the berats of metropolitans, which defined the limits and scope of their functions allowed 39
by Ottoman and relating permission for thestages restoration of Christian andauthority, Jewish places of documents worship. Kadı s weretoinvolved at various in the latter procedure. Following an application from the respective group and an order from the sultan, the court organized an inspection of the building. The exact dimensions and a description of the old structure were recorded to serve as the basis for monitoring the actual work done, also the prerogative of the kadı. The Sofia sicills contain documents reflecting both stages of the procedure,40 as well as the increasing intervention of the governor and other high-ranking officials in control over non-Muslim structures and taxation and in the preservation of the dividing lines between Muslims and the non-Muslim communities.41 THE
KADI
AS OVE RS EE R
The kadı court was in theory ‘the eyes and ears’ of the sultan in each provincial district, in terms of control over and feedback about the functioning of the various institutions and systems constituting the local administration, the urban and district economy, the taxation system, maintenance of order and roads – everything that was broadly within the interests of the central authority. This general principle had specific dimensions in particular kazas on account both of location and of changing demographic and economic realities. The following summary presents the types of problem the kadı of Sofia oversaw as reflected in one sicill for –. The kadı court, and the sicill, continued to be the place where appointments were announced and recorded: of a new vali, of the kadı himself, of the mütesellim (tax collector), of the kaymakam of the seyyids (local administrator for matters concerning the descendants of the Prophet) in the kaza, of the kassam-i askeri (divider of askeri inheritances), of the mimarbaşı (the city architect), and of city police officers and Janissary garrison commanders. The kadı registered permissions to seek and extract silver in the district; he registered the representatives in situ of high-ranking military officials, the metropolitan, low-ranking (Muslim) religious functionaries, and many others. Berats of officials as well asrecorded of the various collectors were notwhich simplyprobably read in the court but were also regularly in thetax ledger, a procedure signalled the official launching of their activities in the kaza. The kadı court continued to play an important role in overseeing the collection of taxes and state deliveries, and was instrumental in the resolution of conflicts that arose between the parties involved. The sicill contains berats for the collection of various taxes, levies and tithes payable in cash; for deliveries of carts for a military campaign, hunters for the imperial hunt, and provisions for the armoury; for the taxes of various groups, including the kefere taifesi (that is, the Orthodox Christians), Jews and
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Armenians, gypsies, yürüks (nomads) and voynuğan,42 inhabitants of the city mahalles, or simply the whole reaya of the kaza, and sometimes even those in smaller adjacent kazas. With regard to disputes over taxation, the sicill of – shows a new development as compared to the first half of the seventeenth century. Several entries note that, due to changed circumstances in the kaza caused by the dispersal of villagers and the impoverishment of those remaining, the local ayan-i vilayet had gathered for the purpose of reassigning the respective tax obligations demanded in the imperial defter. Although no places are specified, it is clear that these gatherings were outside kadı attended the court, and there no indication that the the in meeting. new was taken to theis court and recorded in the order toYet, givethe it legal defter sicill, probably
authority.43 The same procedure – the gathering of local power-holders ‘in one place’ to carry out the distribution (tevzi) of the obligations – was followed also for various deliveries. The obligation to send , hunters for the imperial hunt near Edirne was allocated among the respective ayan and village zabits in the kazas of Sofia and Breznik.44 In these and other cases concerning the obligations of particular communities or professional groups, it seems that the kadı merely registered and sanctioned a decision reached elsewhere. Closely related problems concern the timar system.45 Alongside the registrations of berats for timar holders, sicill entries signal already known trends and developments: the gradual incorporation of timars into the tax-farming system and consequent tax collection matters; the appointment of representatives; the delineation of borders between timar villages; and widespread attempts at cheating, such as reporting the death of or the failure to perform obligations by a titular spahi by a candidate for the respective timar or zeamet. Many orders urge the kadı to investigate and ascertain the correct situation. Traditionally, kadıs oversaw local mobilization for military campaigns. 46 These orders were read in court, and the kadı was broadly authorized to see that all concerned fulfilled their obligations. In –, local commanders and timar holders from the sancak were summoned to Isakcea on ruz-i hızır (St George’s day, the traditional first day of spring campaigns), while Janissaries engaged in the defence of the serhad (frontier) and of Babadağ were called to their place of duty.47 Also traditional is the role of the kadı in fighting the omnipresent brigandage and oppression. He not only investigated specific cases but also compiled lists of the hayduds (brigands) and their accomplices, probably to be sent to the capital city or to the vali. He was expected to ensure the proper functioning of the systems for maintenance of order, placing guards in dangerous places and restraining those engaged in the maintenance of order from committing oppression themselves.48 sicill contains thismarket documents concerning the functioning of Interestingly, the esnaf and the in Sofia,very or infew general. No fixed prices or changes in esnaf membership are recorded, although contemporary sicills from Ruse contain these. The reason for this is unclear, as the kadı was clearly involved in various orders concerning the campaign obligations of some esnaf and in decisions about communities, or fixing the salaries of the tellaks (attendants) in a local hamam. He was approached also with regard to monopolies in the sale of various products, including alum from Gümülcine.49
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COURT STAFF AND LOCAL ASSOCIATES
The kadı was assisted by a number of specialized officers, staff and other more or less informal participants in the judicial process. Among the first group, apart from the various police and military officials, were the naib, the muhtesib (market inspector), the kassam-i askeri and the katib (scribe), as an intermediate figure between the ‘specialized’ and the ordinary staff. Naibs appear in two typical roles, as deputies of kadıs of all ranks in kazas and nahiyes and as assistants of a sharia judge. 50 In Sofia they often figure as the representatives of the court in commissions sent to investigate criminal acts, in civil and family law cases or about non-Muslim places of worship, which implies a certain level of legal qualification. Sometimes naibs figure among the instrumental witnesses to cases. In Sofia, as in the empire generally, the muhtesib was attached to the kadı court. His competences included in the first place ensuring the proper functioning of the market and the imposition of fines on craftsmen and tradesmen in loco for minor offences, while more serious transgressions of market law and discipline were taken to the kadı. Another obligation of the muhtesib was collecting due debts as well as finding sureties for insolvent debtors. Muhtesibs also had prisons under their administration, mainly for debtors but also for brigands. The kadı was also assisted by scribes, court attendants and gate-keepers. In the Sofia court, as elsewhere in the Balkans, katibs were charged with a variety of tasks which exceeded the ordinary scribal work. Apart from their obvious role of compiling documents and recording them in the sicills, the several scribes frequently led investigating commissions, which obviously required some level of legal qualification from at least some of them. Often they are listed among the instrumental witnesses as well. Muhzır s were the kadı ’s assistants most mentioned. TheirThey primary obligation wasamong summoning defendants who hadfrequently failed to appear in court. also accompanied muhtesibs when collecting debts. Very often they served as instrumen-
tal witnesses as well. Throughout the period under consideration they had a chief in Sofia, a muhzırbaşı, but it is not clear whether he had any specific tasks different from those of ordinary muhzırs. Emins of the court were most probably engaged in collecting court taxes. They too appear among the witnesses. Here we should probably list also the interpreter (tercüman) who occasionally appears in the Sofia sicills, usually among the instrumental witnesses, and who mediated between non-Ottoman-speaking zimmis and the court.51 Local inhabitants took part in the work of the court in a variety of capacities. Apart from witnesses providing evidence for specific cases, they were employed as ‘experts’, who gave opinions in disputes as muslihun (mediators) and instrumental witnesses. The institution of the muslihun is closely related to the Ottoman judicial system. 52 Reconciliation was a widespread mechanism of conflict resolution throughout the empire, officially recognized and accepted by the judicial authorities, who often merely recorded an already reached agreement. Mediators intervened in disputes between individuals, between an individual and a territorial community ( mahalle or village), between Christians, between Muslims and in mixed cases, and in a wide range of disputes, including homicide. This, and the fact that only a very few cases regarding minor offences reached the court, raises the issue of the real role of this institution in the legal system and of the law applied in it. One of the most debated topics concerning the judicial systems of Islamic states is
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that of the instrumental witnesses ( şuhud ul-hal) whose names are listed at the end of kadı court documents.53 Their presence presumably rendered legality to the document
issued by the court, and they could serve as potential witnesses to the correctness of the procedure in case the decision was contested. They might also have advised the kadı about local practices. In Sofia and other parts of the Balkans the instrumental witnesses were neither a limited circle of ‘reliable people’ nor bearers of specialized legal knowledge. Very often we see outstanding townsmen and members of the court among them, including former kadıs of Sofia and kadıs currently of other places, naibs, scribes, muhzırs, Janissaries and other military ranks, teachers, mosque functionaries
imams,ofbut and craftsmen and traders, governor, people without any inidentification,mahalle and members the also entourage of the provincial especially the later sicills. In some cases these witnesses obviously had an interest in the outcome, as with inhabitants of the same mahalle, or even neighbours, in the case of property transactions or criminal investigations; or when they had similar professional or confessional affiliation with at least one of the parties. This, however, is not always the case. An important change in the membership of the ‘witnesses to the event’ during the seventeenth century is the significant presence in the latter part of the century of the Muslim leadership – people who can be identified as ayan and their dependants. Finally, another group drawn from the local population who participated in the work of the kadı court consists of the so-called experts (ehl-i hibre, ehl-i vukuf, ehl-i hiresi) and the ‘commissions’ sent to establish the circumstances in a variety of cases, which occasionally included ‘specialists’. They gave opinions on vakıf expenditures, church reconstructions, transacted objects and construction, in criminal cases and in disputes between esnafs. The opinion of these specialists usually provided the basis for the court’s decision. Despite the significance of their advice, their names and professional characteristics often remain unknown to us, hidden behind the generic term ‘experts’. Unfortunately this makes it impossible to draw systematic conclusions both as to what kind of people were called upon in different cases and as to who would initiate such an invitation – the parties concerned or the kadı. This body nevertheless represented a complex of local interest and knowledge working in co-operation with the local sharia court and policing functionaries.
CONCLUSION
The sharia judges and the court continued to be approached in a wide variety of judicial cases and to oversee a number of military and administrative officials, as well as many others in between. The kadı court served as the focal judicial institution for the local population of all groups, although it was the court primarily of Sofian Muslims and much lessasfor other religious communities or for villagers. It issued documents which served legal proof of property rights, legalized agreements reached outside and inside the court. It was a body of authority whose decisions were most likely to be enforced. No doubt this had made it attractive for non-Muslims when they were in a position to choose between their own and the ‘alien’ court. Kadıs adjudicated mainly in contested cases, while in criminal cases they acted in close co-operation with officials involved in securing public order; in the field of kanun, especially in questions related to the timar system and to taxation, they co-operated with the vali and his divan. In Sofia towards the end of the seventeenth century, an even closer collaboration
— A kadi court in the Balkans —
developed between the governor of Rumeli and the kadı, with the former attending some sessions of the sharia court when it acted as an appellate institution, in cases involving important local people or deemed of public importance. On other occasions, the kadı of Sofia participated in the dispensation of justice at the vali’s divan and then recorded the minutes in his sicill, both developments reflecting the further integration of kadıs in the administrative system and the growing importance of the governor as part of the judicial system. In the long run this would result, by the midnineteenth century, in the gradual transformation of the kadı court into a purely sharia one, which served primarily, but not yet exclusively, the religious needs of the Muslims in This a kazaprocess , and inwas theparalleled loss of its by administrative prerogatives. a gradual decrease of the role of sharia judges in the lives of the empire’s non-Muslim subjects. It should be pointed out that, despite the overwhelming majority of the Christians in the district of Sofia, relatively few cases between Christians only are recorded in the kadı sicills as compared to those between Muslims. Jews and Armenians in Sofia, though an urban population, were much less attracted by the possible advantages of the sharia court and approached it mainly in mixed cases – i.e., with members of other religious groups, Muslims in particular. While Orthodox Christians approached the sharia court for a variety of family and inheritance law disputes, even to get married and divorced, or for the division of estates in cases of intra-family discord, this is not the case with Jews and Armenians. To explain the decreasing interest of non-Muslims in the kadı court, we should bear in mind that cases between townsmen are also more numerous than those involving villagers, and in the seventeenth century most of the towns in the Balkans, and Sofia in particular, were already inhabited by a prevalent Muslim population. In the case of villagers, major obstacles were the dangers of the journey and transport difficulties, as well as the expenditure implied by a stay in town. Very important in shaping the attitude of non-Muslims to the kadı court is the fact that it based its decisions on the sharia, while non-Muslims could turn to alternative institutions – Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Armenian, and Catholic religious and self-rule courts – whose importance seems to have been growing from the seventeenth century in parallel with the strengthening of communal structures. Sharia courts nevertheless remained throughout the Ottoman period, until the reforms of the nineteenth century, the major judicial institution in the provinces for Muslims in particular but also for all Ottoman subjects, and an administrative heart of any district. NOTES For an overview, see Agmon and Shahar for the territory of modern Turkey and the Middle East, and Gradeva for Balkan historiography. Gradeva a. Gradeva a. E.g., Sencar Muizeddin Mehmed Efendi, who between and , when he died in the city, spent more than seven years in six appointments. Probably the most prominent monument founded by a sixteenth-century kadı is Seyfi Efendi’s Banebaşi/Molla Camii in the city centre, built in the s by the school of the Ottoman chief architect, Mimar Sinan, and still functioning. The other components of Seyfi Efendi’s vakıf – a dersiye (schoolroom), a han and a kervansaray – have long since disappeared, as have most of the other monuments of Ottoman culture in Sofia. Several sixteenth-century kadıs donated
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funds for the construction and maintenance of mektebs and medreses, for mosques and tekkes, and their names were commemorated in the names of city neighbourhoods. Gradeva b. Gradeva : . By Melek Ahmed Paşa (Dankoff : –). Sencar Muizeddin Mehmed Efendi resisted the governor’s demand, rode on horseback to Istanbul and reported the case to the sultan. The oppressive paşa was summoned, interrogated in front of the kadı and executed (Uğur : –). While numerous grievances against provincial kadıs have been found in seventeenth-century registers of complaints, these were usually against judges of lower rank or naibs (deputy kadıs), who often stayed for very long
terms 4, sira or 197/doc were even 1613, locals. September So far, 1670). I have found only one against a kadı of Sofia, in (AŞD The sicills used here are S bis (–), S (), S ( tereke defter, –), S (–), S (–) and S (–), all housed in the Oriental Department at the Sts Cyril and Methodius National Library in Sofia. On the sicill collection in Sofia, see Ivanova . For concerns about the reliability of such records generally, see Ze’evi ; Gradeva : –; Ergene : –; Agmon and Shahar : –. Despite prescriptions for the keeping of sicills (Akgündüz : –) it seems that recording very much depended on the personal wish of the parties. Gradeva . See, for example, R , of –. Cf. Radušev et al. : doc. , –. Another register from Ruse (Ruse Historical Archive, no. , dated ) suggests that this may have been the local practice. However, in Sofia, vakıf documents were registered in the ‘ordinary’ sicills: S contains evidence of both new and continuing vakıfs. S contains exclusively divisions of estates and documents relating to inheritance problems. See, e.g., Dimitrov ; Gradeva c: –. Mujić . For similar observations on an of eighteenth-century court inweak Anatolia, see Ergene –. On the theoretical framework legal pluralism/diversity, and strong, and : as an attempt to deduce Ottoman realities, see Shahar . Heyd : –. Majer : –. While much remains to be discovered about the specifics of each of these series, the ahkam have attracted least scholarly attention. There were also various ‘estate’ courts – for ulema and for the military – which drew these groups partly out of the kadı jurisdiction, especially in criminal cases. There is little research on their role and functioning within the judicial system, or for the respective group. Ursinus ; Gradeva a. My usage of the term mazalim adheres to Heyd’s ‘the removal of wrongs’ (: –). Hacker ; Gradeva ; Kermeli and her essay in this volume, chapter . İnalcık : ; Gradeva c: . Slot : –; Kermeli : –. Pantazopoulos [] : –; Gerber ; Gradeva : ff.; Kermeli : –.
Shaham ; .however, the situation could be very different; cf. Veinstein . Gradeva d.Shahar Elsewhere, Ivanova , . S bis, p. , docs IXV. These, however, are unique in the sicills in Sofia. They might have continued to be issued but were not registered. Laiou : –. S , f. v, doc. I, of . Ivanova : –. Recorded in S and S . The meaning of the term divan efendisi is uncertain here.
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E.g., nahiye of Razlok, S , /I, /I; for clashes, S , /I. S , /II and /I; S , /I; S , /II resp. E.g., S contains several vakfiyes, documents related to the running of Mehmed Sofu Paşa’s foundation in the city, changes of mütevelli, inspection of repair work, and financial loans. S , /I. E.g., S contains several documents relating to the dismissal of the current metropolitan; none have yet been found regarding the Jewish community. Gradeva . S , /I, /I, /II, /I. Non-Muslims serving in the early centuries as auxiliaries in the Ottoman army and, from the seventeenth century onwards, mainly as grooms in the sultan’s stables. S , /III–, for bedel-i celepkeşan; /I, for avariz; and others. S , /I. On the timar, or dirlik, system, see the essays by Metin Kunt and Gábor Ágoston elsewhere in this volume (chapters 7 and 15 respectively). Gradeva 2004c. S , /I, /II. S , /I, /II, /III. S , /I, /I, /III, /III. Veinstein . Veinstein ; Çiçek . Tamdoğan . Jennings : –; Canbakal : –.
CHAPTER FIVE
IMARET S *
Amy Singer
A
verse from the Koran, inscribed over the gates of more than one Ottoman imaret (public kitchen), reads:
And they give food in spite of their love for it, to the needy, the orphan, and the captive [saying]: We feed you only for the Face of God; we desire no recompense from you, no thankfulness.1 With this message displayed so prominently, it is no surprise that imarets were long considered comparable to modern soup kitchens, feeding modest free meals to the poor, including widows, orphans, the aged, the sick and the infirm, as well as students and ascetic mystics. However, the range of clients eating daily, free of charge, at Ottoman imarets was much broader economically and socially than this list suggests, as were the menus, service and settings.2 The following discussion explores Ottoman imarets in the context of Ottoman charitable practice, material culture, consumption habits and architecture. It considers imarets through the prism of their buildings and locations, their clients and the food they served. Ottoman charity was framed by the principles and practices of Muslim charity. Annual zakat (alms) payments are one of the five cardinal obligations of all Muslims. In addition, the Koran and the hadith (sayings about the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad) frequently recommend giving sadaka (voluntary charity). Sadaka donations can be as small as a blessing or as large as an endowed complex of buildings offering social and welfare services to thousands in the form of a mosque, school, hospital, hospice, physical caravansaray, bathforhouse, public kitchen or of public fountain. Imaret s are therefore evidence the charitable donations individual Ottomans.3 All imarets were established as vakıfs, charitable endowments sometimes known as sadaka cariye (ongoing/enduring charity). Vakıfs were the usual means by which social and welfare services were established and maintained throughout the Muslim world, beginning perhaps from the earliest days of Islam. Many of these services were those provided today by government welfare offices (education, health, poor relief), but they
— Imarets
—
Figure . Inscription above the entrance to the imaret of Mihrişah Sultan (d. ), mother
of Selim III, at Eyüp, Istanbul. Koran : –: ‘We feed you only for the sake of God; we desire no recompense from you, no thankfulness’. Author’s photo.
also included ritual facilities (mosques, ablutions pools, cemeteries) and infrastructure projects (water supply, roads, bridges). Provisions for building maintenance are included in vakfiyes (endowment deeds), signalling that the complexes were imagined as enduring through time, a permanent feature in the socio-economic life and built fabric of cities.4 Beneficent food distributions existed in the Muslim world before the Ottomans. Among the oldest is the simat al-Khalīl, the Table of Abraham, in Hebron. Ascribed to Abraham and attested by the eleventh-century Persian traveller Nasir-i Khusraw, it provided daily to anyone coming to Hebron a loaf of bread, a bowl of lentils cooked in olive oil, and raisins.5 Under the Fatimids and Mamluks in Egypt, the sultans distributed food on special occasions such as Ramadan; in times of hardship they also engaged members of the elite to contribute donations of food aid. Purpose-built kitchens contemporary with the earliest Ottoman principality existed elsewhere. In Tabriz, the foundation of Rashid al-Din () included separate kitchens and menus for travellers and for orphans, students and sufis. 6 However, it was under the Ottomans that imarets became a widespread feature of multi-purpose endowments, serving meals daily to defined groups of beneficiaries.
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Imarets were founded across the Ottoman empire, throughout its history. The first was built in the s, the last perhaps in , and at least one, at Eyüp in Istanbul, is said to have operated continuously since the late eighteenth century. They were located mostly in the towns and cities of Anatolia and the Balkans, more rarely in rural areas or villages, and were less prevalent, too, in the Arabic-speaking provinces of the Middle East and North Africa. The kitchens numbered in the hundreds, but they were not all founded at the same time and did not all remain open without interruption. More were founded in the first three centuries of Ottoman history than in later periods. They ranged in size from neighbourhood or small provincial facilities offering
meals to onehundreds or two dozen oncelargest daily, clusters to the large imperial kitchens that could feed many twice people, a day. The of imaret s were in Istanbul, perhaps as many as fifty, and in the former Ottoman capitals of Bursa and Edirne, which had eight and eleven, respectively. Other large or important towns also had several imarets – Amasya (eight), Iznik (ten), Manisa (seven), Salonica (seven) – and it was not uncommon for a sizeable town to have at least two or three (Afyon, Aksaray, Belgrade, Damascus, Dimetoka, Kastamonu, Mecca, Skopje, Trabzon). There is no official list of all the Ottoman imarets, and one is difficult to compile. The word ‘imaret’ itself can be misleading. The srcinal Arabic word ‘imāra means ‘habitation and cultivation’ or ‘the act of building, making habitable’. In Ottoman Turkish, the word became ‘imaret’, and was used with two additional meanings. It signified a construction project of one or more buildings, a meaning derived from the use of the complexes to found and develop new neighbourhoods. Complexes also contributed to the creation of new settlements or fortified outposts by providing the core of basic physical infrastructure and services needed for a new Muslim community or a stopping place. More narrowly, ‘imaret’ was the public kitchen, one of many elements in a complex, sometimes specified as imaret-i darü’z-ziyafet, ‘the building for feasts’, or imaret-i darü’l-it‘am, ‘the feeding building’.7 This chapter uses the word ‘imaret’ only to refer to the public kitchens and their subordinate facilities: storerooms, cellars, refectories and baking ovens. The fact that several institutions distributed food created additional confusion about imarets. Especially in the first two centuries of Ottoman rule, it seems that zaviye-imarets and imaret-mosques overlapped functionally. Moreover, free meals might be had in a sufi lodge (tekke, takiyya, hanegah or zaviye), a caravansaray, an imperial palace, or the home of a wealthy person. It is unclear whether these institutions more often competed or co-operated with each other, especially in their urban settings. It is also unclear how individuals chose among one or more institutions, though such strategies may have been an integral part of urban survival for some. The collective impact of these institutions on the populace is not easy to calculate, but it has been estimated that,received in the sixteenth century, ups.to8 per cent of the population in Edirne and Istanbul food daily at imaret HISTORIOGRAPHY AND SOURCES
The discrete history of imarets was mostly neglected until the end of the twentieth century. When mentioned, they were conceived as largely static and unchanging, because they were studied primarily from their prescriptive endowment deeds ( vakfiye). Also, they were usually portrayed as auxiliary appendages to the mosques and medreses that
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took centre stage in Ottoman complexes, serving as the showcase elements of Muslim faith and Islamic learning. The first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (published –) has only a brief paragraph on the term. The second edition (published –) has no entry at all, and ‘imaret’ is covered there primarily in the general article ‘matbakh’ (kitchen). Godfrey Goodwin repeatedly mentions imarets in his classic History of Ottoman architecture and defines ‘imaret’ as a soup kitchen in his glossary, but it is not in the index. However, his Appendix II is an extended discussion of ‘The vakfiye and imaret system’, where imarets are complexes, not kitchens. Both Ömer Lutfi Barkan and Halil İnalcık have asserted the importance of this ‘ vakıf – imaret 9
system’ the development of theonempire. As forfor somewhat longer works imarets as kitchens, two on the second Ottoman capital, Edirne, offer an extended catalogue of local imarets and an analysis of their collective impact.10 A more recent publication is this author’s monograph Constructing Ottoman beneficence: an imperial soup kitchen in Ottoman Jerusalem, which investigates the foundation process and early operation of the imaret of Haseki Hurrem Sultan (d. ), wife of Süleyman I.11 The same imaret was studied extensively by Peri for the insights it afforded on eighteenth-century vakıf foundation and management in Jerusalem.12 Broader discussions of imarets include an entry in a multi-volume collection on Turkish history.13 Most recently, the fifteen wide-ranging articles collected in Feeding people, feeding power define the problématiques of imaret research, identify relevant source materials, and delineate directions for future study.14 There is no shortage of source materials about public kitchens. Thousands of Ottoman endowment deeds survive, for large and small foundations alike. One deed could run to thousands of words, describing in greater or lesser detail the intentions of the founder; the institution to be established; the services provided; the staff, salaries, equipment and furnishings; and the endowed revenue-yielding properties. For imarets, the deeds often stipulated the menu, ingredients, kitchen staff, budget for foodstuffs, equipment and salaries. Vakifyes provide blueprints of founders’ intentions, expectations and ideology, all of which were culturally shaped and calibrated to the specific size and place of the individual foundation. Other relevant written records include tapu tahrir defterleri (Ottoman revenue survey registers) and local kadı sicilleri (judicial court records), as well as evidence found in Ottoman chronicles, and the reports of Ottoman and foreign travellers. Many buildings remain as evidence, some in good repair or even in use. Some kitchen equipment (grain storage chests and mills) has been found, and it is possible that more – cauldrons, ladles or bowls – may yet be identified. Annual or periodic muhasebe defterleri (income–expenditure accounts registers) exist for many of the imarets. They contain detailed lists of foodstuffs purchased and stored,and thethe names in orrevenues. benefiting from the foundation, sumsand andpositions sources of of people annualemployed endowment The account books are useful companions to endowment deeds and literary texts for understanding the changing capacity and functioning of imarets. More detailed registers listed food and bread recipients, cash payments in lieu of meal allocations, daily storehouse revenues and expenditures, and detailed registers of both people who received cash stipends but no free meals and employees who received salaries.15 Altogether, the account books are an unparalleled source about foodstuffs and imarets, as well as about consumption and nutrition norms.16
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BUILDING
IMARET
S
Together with zaviyes, imarets were a settlement mechanism of the Ottoman conquests westward across the Balkans and further south and east in Anatolia. Each institution provided food and shelter to wandering dervishes, travellers, students, merchants and the poor. They were one aspect of a general policy that aimed to create a stable Ottoman presence in each town and city of the empire, and represented a significant Ottoman investment in the provinces.17 No clear architectonic genealogy of Ottoman imarets has been established. Scholars point to the Seljuk caravansarays as one likely model for public kitchens, but the earliest imarets were small institutions. The caravansarays, even more modest ones, included sleeping, stabling and storage spaces together with a kitchen, mosque and bath, enclosed by an external wall; they provided free, secure lodging and food at regular intervals between the towns of Anatolia. The T-shaped mosques that housed zaviye-imarets and imaret-mosques in the first two Ottoman centuries were multi-functional. Their central space was reserved for prayer and sufi rituals, while secondary spaces like the side iwans (rooms) were for sleeping and perhaps eating. Cooking was probably done in a separate building or outside in the courtyard. This flexible space accommodated the various practices of Islam favoured by the gazi fighters and their sufi shaykhs, who also provided spiritual guidance for the semi-settled nomads and new converts in the Turkish principalities of western Anatolia and the newly conquered Balkans. Examples include the fourteenthcentury mosques of Orhan I and Bayezid I in Bursa, as well as the slightly later ones of Bayezid Paşa in Amasya and Mahmud Paşa in Istanbul, all of which had imarets.18 By the sixteenth century, the term ‘imaret’ was more often used exclusively to mean aşhane).ofThe ‘public kitchen’the (modern Turkish, narrowing of the seems to have paralleled architectural evolution Ottoman mosques intomeaning extensively articulated complexes in which each function was housed in a separate structure. This is reflected in the chronicle of buildings designed by the consummate Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan (d. ), which included imaret as a separate category or building type.19 In her study of Sinan, Necipoğlu translates imaret as ‘hospice’, emphasizing the fact that many imarets operated in close proximity to accommodation for guests, such as a caravansaray, han, tabhane or tekke.20 In such cases, the imaret also fed the guests and sometimes provided fodder for their animals. Lowry claims that the earliest known Ottoman imaret-like institution was the hanegah built in by Orhan Gazi (–), in the village of Mekece, east of Iznik (Nicaea). No explicit provision is made in its vakfiye for serving food, only that the manager of the endowment should ‘expend what is in the interests of the traveling dervishes, the poor, the strangers and mendicants, and those in search of knowledge’. Lowry makes an undocumented but informed leap to call the place an imaret, assuming that food – and shelter – were ‘in the interests’ of this group. 21 The fifteenth-century Ottoman chronicler Aşıkpaşazade (d. after ) wrote that Orhan Gazi established the first imaret in Iznik in , shortly after the besieged city surrendered to the Ottomans in . By the time Aşıkpaşazade used the term imaret in the later fifteenth century, he could apparently do so unambiguously. Orhan reputedly inaugurated his imaret personally by lighting its first kitchen fire.22 Another imaret was founded in Iznik by Murad I (–) in , in honour of his mother, Nilufer Hatun. By the time of the survey register, Iznik had five imarets and
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town quarters named for two of them.23 More than one of these imarets was founded by members of the Çandarlı family of early Ottoman commander-vezirs. Among other prolific founders of early Ottoman imarets were Evrenos Bey (d. ), one of the most successful Ottoman commanders in the Balkans, and his descendants. They founded at least twelve imarets across northern Greece during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, together with other buildings such as mosques and sufi tekkes. As in Mekece and Iznik, these institutions probably served many local Christians as well as the Muslim followers of Evrenos, encouraging people to remain in newly conquered areas. Whether appreciated for their practical benefits or as reflections of the value placed Muslims on charitable endeavours, the endowments may alsoshave playedina role in by attracting people to convert to Islam. Lowry counted altogether imaret the Ottoman Balkans, mostly dating from the first years of Ottoman rule. Considered according to contemporary national boundaries, they include Greece (sixtyfive), Bulgaria (forty-two), Albania (nine), countries of the former Yugoslavia (twentynine), Romania (two) and Hungary (two). Alongside the imarets, there were over zaviyes in northern and central Greece, such that institutions offering food and shelter, even if modest, must have been ubiquitous in the early Ottoman period. 24 Bursa, the first Ottoman capital, had many imarets, but, unlike in Iznik or in the small towns of the Balkans, they were mostly part of large imperial mosque complexes. These complexes, funded by the spoils of conquest, were built by Orhan Gazi, Murad I, Bayezid I (–), Çelebi Sultan Mehmed (–) and Murad II (–). That of Orhan Gazi, destroyed in , was the earliest in the city and the first imaret to exist as a free-standing building. It was erected in close proximity to the founder’s mosque and its other attendant structures. The earliest surviving free-standing imaret building belongs to the Yeşil complex built by Çelebi Sultan Mehmed I. Compared to later imarets, its two rectangular rooms of brick and uncut stone, srcinally roofed in wood, seem casually planned, plain and functional.25 Surviving fourteenth-century structures such as the Nilufer Hatun imaret in Iznik or the Evrenos imaret in Komotini/ Gümülcine afford little sense of how food preparation and distribution were managed. Murad II’s Bursa complex shows the structural direction taken by imperial imarets in the mid-fifteenth century, with huge indoor hearths for cauldrons and refectory spaces. Unfortunately, the kitchens of Murad II’s two complexes in Edirne – the Üç Şerefei and the Muradiye – have disappeared, as has that of Fatih’s enormous complex in Istanbul. What imperial imarets had become by the later fifteenth century is readily observed, however, in the imarets of Bayezid II’s extant complexes in Amasya (), Edirne (–) and Istanbul (–), all free-standing stone buildings within the general perimeter of the complex.26 In , the Amasya imaret was in use as a soup kitchen, while that of Edirne was restored in . The largest s were of built the sixteenth century.Sinan, Overoftwenty constructed under imaret the direction the in imperial chief architect which were only eight survive. Five of these were buildings with their own independent courtyards (e.g., Süleymaniye in Istanbul, Muradiye in Manisa), spaces that integrated cooking, storage and dining facilities, housed separately from the other activities of the complex. Three others, however, shared their courtyards with the mosque of the complex (e.g., Sulaymaniyya in Damascus).27 Eighteen imarets functioned in Istanbul during the sixteenth century, all connected to mosque complexes. Nine had been built by sultans, nine by vezirs or other
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high-ranking persons. Yet, large as they were, these facilities could not have fed everyone in need of a meal, whatever the source of their need. Yerasimos has identified an additional endowments that provided food in Istanbul, all of them smaller and based in neighbourhood mosques (mescid ), zaviyes or schools, mostly feeding local poor people. These distributions were not daily, but occurred primarily on religious holidays, and complemented those provided by endowments for clothing, water supply, urban maintenance and tax assistance.28 Some imarets were constructed by incorporating older structures associated with previous rulers. The Salimiyya mosque and imaret in Damascus took over the Māristān imaret al-Qaymarī while thewoman. HasekiThis Sultan in Jerusalem took aover of a prominent Mamluk strategy afforded the founder spacethe in house an existing urban fabric, essentially introducing an Ottoman presence while erasing the monuments of previous rulers and their affiliates. The buildings and their activities then became a focus of Ottoman identity and attention. Selim I gave his Damascus imaret preferential treatment in distributing foodstuffs, and perhaps for this reason it was closed during a local revolt against Ottoman rule in . 29 Recalling the Seljuk hans, some complexes with imarets were also built in more isolated places, specifically in order to ensure the safety and comfort of travellers on the main roads of the empire. A very early example of this is the imaret built at one end of Uzun Köprü, the ‘long bridge’ erected by Murad II and part of a project to secure the marshy, bandit-ridden road south of Edirne. According to the sixteenthcentury historian Mustafa Ali, Murad himself served food there when it opened. Imarets were included in the defensive complexes built by Süleyman I at Belen and Sokollu Mehmed Paşa at Payas (–) on the road between Adana and Aleppo.30 In Syria, imarets seem to have been tied more to pilgrimage routes. In Damascus and Jerusalem, they are both disproportionately large, emphasizing their role in sustaining pilgrims to the holy sites.31 Kitchens in Ottoman imarets and sufi tekkes had similar elements: kitchen (matbah), refectory (me’kelhane or ta‘amhane) and pantry or storeroom (kiler). Tekke kitchens also often had a spiritual dimension lacking in imarets, since cooking food was sometimes part of sufi rituals and the person in charge of the kitchen held a high rank in the order’s hierarchy. The kitchen could also be a place of study and initiation, notably for the Mevlevis, who were taught to whirl there. For the Bektaşis, the person responsible for educating novices was called aşçı dede or ser tabbah (head cook). The mythical black cauldron (kara kazan) symbolized the order itself, and was also adopted by the Janissaries, representing their particular attachment to the Bektaşis, as well as signalling revolt when overturned.32
CLIENTS
Contrary to early twenty-first-century expectations, not all or even most of the people who ate in Ottoman public kitchens were impoverished. Rather, the right to a meal was a function of social or economic status, employment or profession. Imarets imposed different kinds of restrictions on their clients: who could eat, how, what, where and when. All of these conditions point to a system conceived not only to assist people or distribute to them food they deserved, but also to control them and to reinforce existing socio-economic hierarchies.
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Figure . Illustration of the vakıf complex built by Süleyman in the s at Belen (Bakras), a
halting station on the route from Anatolia into Syria, through the mountains north of Aleppo. The complex included two caravansarays, a mosque and a dervish convent which provided food for travellers. From Seyyid Lokman, Hünername (–), Topkapı Saray Library, H. : b.
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In Istanbul, the imaret of Fatih (‘the conqueror’) Mehmed was perhaps the largest anywhere in the empire. By the mid-sixteenth century, approximately , people were fed there twice a day. Among its regular clients were visiting dignitaries, travellers, scholars and students at the colleges attached to the mosque; the doorkeepers and guards of these colleges; the students of three other nearby colleges and four nearby dervish lodges; student candidates and their eight proctors; fifty-six members of the imaret staff; forty-seven hospital staff members; and fifty-one other functionaries of the complex, including employees serving at the mosque and tombs. When all these people had been fed, leftovers were distributed to the indigent poor. 33 imaretthat The Süleymaniye ’s list of around , diners resembled that present of Fatih, although the vakfiye noted orphans and children of the poor who were in 34 the primary school (mekteb) on any given day should also be served. At the smaller establishment of Haseki Hurrem Sultan in Jerusalem, two meals per day were served to people described in the endowment deed as ‘poor and pious’, together with the kitchen staff of fifty, whoever was staying in the fifty-five guest rooms in the complex, and the local sufi Shaykh Ahmad al-Dajjani, as well as sixteen of his followers.35 Still more modest was the kitchen of Fatma Hatun in Jenin, which was to feed approximately fifty people once a day.36 The vakfiyes often stipulated that people were to eat in a specific order, which reflected a social hierarchy among the diners. The conditions in which their meals were served and the type or amount of food each person received reinforced the order. At Fatih, the guests ate first, followed by the college scholars, students and staff; after them came the students from the nearby colleges, the resident dervishes, and the candidate students and their proctors. Next to eat were the staff of the imaret and the rest of the Fatih complex. At the Sulaymaniyya in Damascus, people staying in the guest rooms were served privately in their rooms, twice a day. In Jerusalem, people also ate in shifts: imaret employees, then caravansaray residents, and finally the poor, who were too numerous to eat together, so the men were fed first, then the women.37 Some imarets forbade people from removing food, with specific exceptions. At the Süleymaniye no strangers could remove food in buckets. However, food could be taken to poor scholars, the descendants of the Prophet, the blind, the paralyzed and the sick.38 In Jerusalem, Shaykh Dajjani and his sufis collected food from the imaret and brought it back to their residence across the city.39 Everyone else ate in the imaret refectory.40 Even in the last-known imaret planned in Istanbul in , the removal of food was explicitly prohibited, except in the case of someone sick at home who had the right to eat there. Such cases, however, required approval from the local imam and the muhtar of the quarter.41 Imarets often servedmedrese students (suhte/softa), like a university cafeteria in the mid-
sixteenth century. Students’denied mobilityaccess and potential for disruption nuisancefor enough to have them occasionally or for guarantors to bewere demanded their behaviour, since complaints were filed that they plundered the kitchens and threatened the staff. A certain standard of decorum was expected inimarets. However, according to Mustafa Ali, the quality of food in Istanbulimarets was enough to raise a protest.42 Christians, local and foreign, seem to have been regular clients at someimarets, becoming targets of the ideology and policy they embodied. At the end of the fourteenth century, the Bavarian Johann Schiltberger noted that ‘the city [Bursa] contains . . . eight hospitals [spitäler] where poor people are received, whether they be Christians,
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infidels [Muslims] or Jews’.43 Visiting Bursa several decades later, Bertrandon de la Brocquière wrote: ‘There are very nice places, like hospitals. In three or four of these, bread, meat and wine are distributed to those who want to take them in God’s name’.44 The serving of wine may indicate that Christians were welcome guests. According to the English traveller George Wheler, Bursa’simarets were still open to all comers in the later seventeenth century.45 Theodore Spandugnino, writing in the early sixteenth century about the Fatih Mehmed complex in Istanbul, described a superb building . . . the hospital is open to all, Christians, Jews and Turks; and its doctors and food threehere, timestheir a day. I have seencared menfor. of the 46 upper classgive and free othertreatment grand persons lodging horses being In the early eighteenth century, the imaret of Haseki Hurrem in Jerusalem served bread and soup ‘made with olive oil and some vegetables’ to each poor person who asked for it.47 No first-hand account in a Jewish source has yet confirmed that Jews also availed themselves of food in imarets and, if they did so, how this accorded with the dietary laws of kashrut. However, Jews were a minority population in the empire, and so were not a factor comparable to Christians in Ottoman political considerations. Moreover, Jewish communities traditionally organized food distributions as part of a broader poor relief system.48 Free meals worked as Ottoman propaganda to persuade newly conquered populations that Ottoman rule did not aim to create hardship; nor was Islam a miserly religion. Rather, imarets were part of Ottoman istimalet (good will or accommodation), which also encouraged assimilation and conversion.49 One key question with only sporadic answers is how people might acquire the right to eat at an imaret if they were not included among its srcinally defined beneficiaries. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the right to eat could be claimed for a variety of reasons. Poor neighbours of animaret – widows, hacis, dervishes – were sometimes granted food shares through certificates.50 Formal petitions could be submitted to the goverment requesting food from animaret. Thus, the kadı of Konya appealed to have the dervishes at the tomb of Mevlana Celaluddin Rumi included in distributions from the newly built adjacent imaret of Selim II.51 In Istanbul at the end of the sixteenth century, one Ahmed, a crippled soldier, petitioned for meal rights because he could not work.52 Such rights could be willed or inherited, even divided in the next generation.53 Another phenomenon remains to be further investigated. In some imarets, individuals received food distributions far in excess of their daily needs, either because they were assigned a large quantity of bread or because they held more than one job, each one entailing meal rights. In at least one case, receiving multiple meals was expressly forbidden. However, inDamascus others, theshows excesspeople food was a matter of entitlements record. Meier’s research on eighteenth-century who received authorized by the kadı and comprising combined distributions of bread from the two Damascus imarets of Selim I and Süleyman I, as well as from what was called hinta al-fuqara (‘wheat of the poor’) from the village of Daraya. Some recipients were from wellknown local families, whose entitlement could be inherited from one generation to the next.54 One can speculate that, in cases like these, people either fed other members of their families or redistributed food to those needier than themselves, thereby becoming patrons and benefactors as a result of the charity they themselves received.
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Even from the small amount of research on imarets in different periods, it is clear that the population eating in them varied over time. At Süleymaniye, for example, the number of employees seems to have decreased while the number of beneficiaries rose.55 The most significant change seems to have occurred during the nineteenth century, as the clientele gradually included more indigents. The change probably resulted from several factors: the reorganization ofvakıf administration that accompanied the tanzimat reforms; changing ideas about how to care for the poor, their proper role and place in society; and the dislocations of population, which became more marked in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a result of successive wars and gradual loss 56
of Earlier territory. changes in the way imaret beneficiaries were defined, as well as larger variations in local practice than those we currently understand, may also be revealed with further research. In , Istanbul had fifteen functioning imarets. In April , all but two were closed by official order after the Young Turk revolution of , in which older institutions, identified with Abdülhamid II, were eliminated and replaced by modern ones. However, the substitutes were not adequate to distribute food to the poor, and by the imarets of Fatih, Süleymaniye, Nuruosmaniye and Atik Valide were allowed to reopen.57 MENUS
The focus on what were perceived to be the more noble elements of an urban complex of buildings is mirrored by the historiographical attention to foods of elite households and especially of the imperial kitchens (matbah-i amire) of Topkapı Palace. The imperial palace kitchens, although funded, and by the state budgetthus andbynot by charitable donations, operated in part like an imaret were denoted Evliya Çelebi. 58 The palace kitchens fed the sultan, the imperial family, the entire palace staff, visitors to the palace, and soldiers when they came to collect their salaries. Foodstuffs and prepared foods were also distributed from the imperial palace and from the grand vezir’s residence at the Sublime Porte (bab-i ali) to a wide variety of clients in Istanbul, notably poor and needy people in the city on special occasions. In the nineteenth century, these included the sultan’s accession, royal birthdays and religious holidays. While Topkapı was the model for distributions, these occurred in a similar way from the imperial palace in Edirne, from the Old Palace in Istanbul, and later from the nineteenth-century palaces of Dolmabahçe, Çırağ an and Yıldız.59 In terms of capacity, Topkapı in the later sixteenth century fed over , people daily, and on special occasions as many as ,. To accomplish this, the palace operated nine kitchen units, employing sixty cooks, assistants, and a total staff of , to ,. In the nineteenth-century, palace distributions of cooked food rose significantly, and under Abdülhamid II the palace kitchens functioned as imarets for their neighbourhoods. The situation reached a point where people were said to be moving to the palace vicinity in order to save money on food. This situation was seriously addressed under Mehmed V Reşat (–), after the deposition of Abdülhamid II.60 The menu at the palace kitchens was mostly rice pilav, meat, bread and sweet saffron rice (zerde); special meals included rice soup cooked with meat and parsley and accompanied by baklava made with honey and walnuts.61 The quantity and quality of
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ingredients in imperial palaces surpassed those in imarets, as did the variety of foods served to the imperial family and important guests. But, for the staff and visiting subjects, meals may have resembled those served in imarets. Meals were mostly served twice a day in imarets, except during Ramadan, when only one was served. They always included bread. The regular cooked dishes were starchy and mostly savoury. The most basic and common food was cracked wheat (bulgur) or rice soup, with or without meat, perhaps enriched with salt, parsley, onions, cumin, pepper, chick peas, squash and sour grape or yogurt and chard, plus bread. On Fridays holidays and festivals, or for diners of higher status, richer foods such as dane (meat, chickpeas, butterfat, andfruit, rice) saffron), were served, as sweet disheswith suchdried as zerde (starch, honey,salt dried pudding cooked fruit, zırbaç aşureas(awell and nuts, and whatever was available) or baklava. The special fare of dane and zerde
constituted holiday and ceremonial staples, expected and so placed on every table, no matter the rank of the guest. At the circumcision feast of Süleyman’s sons Bayezid and Cihangir in , dane and zerde also appeared on the tables of rich and poor alike.62 At the Fatih imaret in Jerusalem, approximately , loaves of bread were baked and distributed daily. Travellers who came to stay at the caravansaray of the Fatih complex were served honey and bread at the imaret immediately upon their arrival, to revive them after their journey. The Fatih imaret could accommodate about highranking guests per day served at tables (sofra) laid for four. These guests received daily meals of dane and sometimes zerde as well, the dishes that most others ate only once a week. Sometimes guests had meat stew with plums and fresh fruits. Visitors of higher status, such as the eşraf (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad), had sheep’s trotters (paça) served for breakfast as a great delicacy, as well as a dish made of pumpkin, honey, jam, cinnamon and cloves, and generous portions of meat and rice. In contrast, every two children were to share a bowl of soup, a portion of meat and two loaves of bread. The standard serving for the majority of staff, college students and scholars, though unspecified, was probably one serving of soup apiece and a loaf of bread. 63 Everyone at the Haseki Sultan imaret in Jerusalem ate the same wheat and rice soups with bread, similar to those served at Fatih, with larger servings specified for the staff and travellers. Employees at the Jerusalem imaret received one ladle of soup and two loaves of bread per meal, the guests one ladle and one loaf, while the sufis and the largest category of the poor received one half-ladle and one loaf each per meal. On Fridays, each person received dane and zerde, but the poor had to share a piece of meat between every two of them, while the others had a whole piece each. 64 CONCLUSION imaret sultans, The earliest vezirs, ands Ottoman seem to have frontier beencommanders relatively small suchinstitutions, as Evrenos.founded As the empire by the expanded, the buildings and their capacities also grew larger and more magnificent, reflecting the increasing power and prestige of the Ottoman dynasty. Since imarets and other imperial endowments were tied directly to the prestige of the dynasty, their ability to function could reflect well or badly on the sultan and his government. An inactive or badly run kitchen, as well as criticism like that written by Mustafa Ali, could work to undermine its legitimacy. 65 Yet it was no simple matter to maintain the large kitchens. Although they may not have been either the most expensive structures
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to build in any complex or the most prestigious, imarets often seem to have consumed a larger share of annual endowment revenues than any other single institution in the complex. Not only did they require wages and maintenance, like every other building, they also required regular supplies of food, firewood, water, and cooking and serving equipment to accomplish their role, which included sustaining all the other employees of the complex as well as guests, students and some indigents. The imarets served an additional function, beyond those of distributing food and contributing to the legitimacy of the dynasty, as noted above. In the fact of their endowment, their names, their numbers in the empire, and in the manner of their imaret functioning, including their they menus, s were distinctly Ottoman. Far from capital and the major cities, served similar food, every day, at the same timethe of day, to a predictable list of clients, with roughly identical variations on holidays and festivals. Within this uniformity, however, variety did exist. The shapes of buildings were modified by local materials and artisans. While the basic types of soups, festive dishes and bread unified the imarets, local variations of additives, local varieties of wheat, and traditions of what to add to aşure pudding affected what was served, as did local or temporary scarcity or availability. However, the overall tone was reflected in the vakfiye instructions for two imarets in Syria, which said that food should be served ‘as it was established in other imarets and takiyyas’. This deed also had to define explicitly dishes that needed no description in the central Ottoman lands, a fact emphasizing that the Ottomans had extended their reach beyond the boundaries of a shared food culture. Imarets were a stable fixture in the Ottoman landscape, not only a tool of conquest, settlement and perhaps Islamization, but also a means of Ottomanization. They helped create a commonality of experience among Ottoman subjects in the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Arabic-speaking provinces of the empire.66
NOTES * This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation, grant # / Koran : –. Meier (: ) also notes this contradiction and points out the political agenda evident in the list of imaret beneficiaries. Zysow ; Weir and Zysow ; Singer . For a general introduction to vakıf (Arabic: waqf ), see Peters et al. ; on renovations, see Ergin . Nasir-i Khusraw : –. Sanders : , , , ; Singer a: . –; Zarinebaf-Shahr ; Kiel . Ergin : –; Ayverdi : –; Inalcık b: –; Singer : –. Barkan –a; Gerber ; Yerasimos : . The rough calculations done by Barkan and Gerber for imarets in Istanbul and Edirne, respectively, have recently been challenged in Orbay a. . Huart ; Waines et al. ; Goodwin : –; Barkan –a; Inalcık b. Kazancıgıl ; Gerber . Singer a. Peri , . Singer b. Ergin et al. . The most extensive studies of these registers were begun by Barkan (–b, and ) and have recently been continued in depth by Orbay (, a).
— Imarets
—
Faroqhi : –. Lowry : , ; Lowry : ; Kiel : . Necipoglu : –, –; Goodwin . Tanman : ; Sâî Mustafa Çelebi : , . Necipoglu : ; Neumann : . Lowry a: ; also Lowry , . Âs¸ıkpas¸azade : . Ibid.: –; Lowry : –. Lowry : –, –, , . Ergin et al. : ; Goodwin : ; Tanman : .
Ibid.: Tanman –. : –. Yerasimos . Meier : –; Singer a: ff. Necipoglu : –, –. Meier . Tanman . Ünver : –, which is a distribution list from /. Kürkçüoglu : –. Singer a: –. Meier : . Singer a: ; Meier : . Kürkçüoglu : , –. Topkapı Sarayı Ars¸ivi, Defter /. Stephan : . BOA, Y.PRK BS¸K / Muharrem ( Sept. ), described in the catalogue as: Hamidiye Camii ile Ertugrul Tekkesi arasında padis¸ah tarafından yapılacak imaretin nizam-
namesi ile müsveddesi. Neumann : ; Tietze : II, , . Schiltberger : , cited in Lowry : . Kline : , cited in Lowry : . Wheler : , cited in Lowry : . Spandounes : . Morison : –. Ben-Naeh . Lowry : –. Orbay a: ff. Konyalı : . Topkapı Saray Ars¸ivi, E./. Orbay a: –. Orbay a; Singer ; Meier : . Orbay a: –. Ener ; Özbek . Öztürk : –; Özbek –: –; Pakalın –: II, .
Faroqhi : –; Ertug : , .Evliya Çelebi : a. Ibid.: , –. Ibid.: . Faroqhi : –; on the circumcision feast, Tezcan . Kürkçüoglu : –. Stephan : –. Neumann : –. Meier : –, ; Neumann : .
CHAPTER SIX
SUFIS IN TH E AG E OF STATE BUILD ING AND CONFESSIONALIZATION *
Derin Terzioğlu
T
he word ‘sufi’ evokes timeless images of whirling dervishes and an ancient but equally timeless lore of spirituality with only the most tenuous links to Islam. Thankfully, there is now a substantial scholarly literature which shows that sufi thought and practice also has a history, and that this history is inextricably connected with the history of Islamic piety at large. As the etymology of the word ‘sufi’ (wearer of wool) reminds us, the early sufis had emerged out of the ranks of Muslim renunciants in Baghdad between the late eighth and early tenth centuries. What distinguished this group from ordinary renunciants was their inward turn, their search for a more intimate knowledge of God through a variety of techniques of self-transformation. Initially a relatively marginal group, sufis had succeeded by the eleventh century in spreading across a vast Islamic world, and, notwithstanding the controversies surrounding some sufi beliefs and practices, normative sufism had become largely accepted as a legitimate part of what had by then been established as Sunni Islam.1 However, it was only during the next four centuries – a period which began with the resurgence of nomadic tribalism under the Seljuks and ended with the formation of more durable empires by the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals – that sufism became truly popularized. The organizational features of sufi communities were also transformed during this period. Increasingly, it became usual for an aspirant sufi first to find a ‘perfect master’ and submit him or herself to his authority. Over time, these communities of masters and disciples became organized into sufi orders or tarikats (literally, ‘way’), each distinguished by a distinctive teaching method and a silsile, an authoritative chain of spiritual transmission that traced each living master to masters 2
of Nevertheless, thealso institutionalization sufismsuch was not anrise orderly affair, andthe thepast. late medieval period saw some contraryoftrends, as the of deviant, nonconformist dervish movements3 and the transfusion of sufism with elements of ‘extreme’ Shi’ism (guluvv) throughout the eastern lands of Islam. These transformations were still in progress when towards the end of the thirteenth century the Ottomans first made a bid for political power in the borderlands between a diminished Byzantine empire and a crumbling Seljuk sultanate of Rum. In this particular setting, where Muslims were initially a minority, the institutionalization of sufism took longer than in the more established lands of Islamdom. It was also inti
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mately connected with two parallel processes: state-building and confessionalization. The latter term refers here to the initiatives taken by Ottoman religious and political authorities during the sixteenth century to refashion the attitudes and behaviours of the empire’s Muslim subjects in conformity with the principles of Sunni Islam.4 Historians have generally approached the institutionalization and confessionalization of sufism in Ottoman lands through a conceptual framework which was first formulated by Köprülü in the early twentieth century and extensively utilized by Ocak more recently. Generally, historians subscribing to the Köprülü–Ocak line assume that the Seljuk and, after them, the Ottoman authorities (and the urban elites under their rule) had or always to Sunni Islam,the butpre-Islamic they also postulate thethe existence of a ‘popular’ ‘folk’subscribed Islam, which continued beliefs of Turks beneath a sufi veneer. Accordingly, it was only in the sixteenth century when a rival Shi’i dynasty, the Safavids, commanded the loyalty of certain discontented elements among the Muslim population under Ottoman rule that this bifurcation attained a new sectarian dimension and led to a series of confrontations between the Ottoman state and some sufi circles. Recently, however, some scholars have questioned key elements of this narrative by showing that the essentialized, dichotomous categories of ‘high’ vs. ‘low’, as well as ‘orthodox’ vs. ‘heterodox’ Islam or sufism, do little justice to the complexity and fluidity of religious (and social and cultural) affiliations in late medieval and early modern Ottoman Anatolia and the Balkans. They argue that the appeal of no sufi group or movement was restricted to a single social, political or cultural milieu, and that the social and religious profile of the adherents of any one group/movement/order could vary from region to region and from period to period.5 They have further emphasized that the religious transformations of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries entailed not only the Shi’itization of some sectors of the Ottoman population and the emergence of the Kızılbaş (modern Alevi) community, but also the Sunnitization of the Ottoman ruling elites and a broad cross-section of Ottoman society. This essay builds on these findings to present a more complex picture of the institutionalization and confessionalization of sufism in the Ottoman central lands during the first three centuries of Ottoman rule. It also strikes a middle ground between two co-existing tendencies in current scholarship by seeing Ottoman confessionalization not as driven by political expediency or by religious concerns alone,6 but rather as a complex process with significant socio-cultural, political and religious dimensions. The late fifteenth-century legend about a prophetic dream seen by Osman (d. c.), the founder of the dynasty, represents Ottoman imperial success as the result of a joining of forces between Osman and a sufi, the Vefai dervish Edebalı.7 This dream narrative is almost certainly apocryphal, but evidence from Ottoman land sur8 veys confirms that Edebalı Vefai dervishes present almost in the Ottoman principality in thewas firstone halfofofseveral the fourteenth century.already The hitherto completely neglected history of the Vefais in Anatolia presents an apt point to begin discussion, because it challenges so many of the assumptions of earlier historiography. The Vefai order had srcinated not in Central Asia, the presumed ‘homeland of the Turks’, but in neighbouring Iraq. Its founder, Ebu’l-Vefa (d. ), was a seyyid, a descendant of the Prophet, who had spent most of his life among the Kurds in northern Iraq, and who had attracted disciples from many different ethnicities and social backgrounds. By the late twelfth century Vefai dervishes were found in eastern and
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east-central Anatolia, and some had moved further west to the borderlands where the early Ottomans were based after the suppression of the Babai revolt (–). One of the instigators of this Turcoman-cum-sufi-led messianic revolt against Seljuk rule was a Vefai sheykh by the name of Baba İlyas. It is difficult to find a blanket term to categorize the religious and sectarian orientation of the Vefais from their eleventh-century srcins down to their extinction as a distinctive group sometime in the mid-sixteenth century. There is general scholarly consensus that Ebu’l-Vefa must have been at least nominally a Sunni, although he and his dervishes also indulged in practices that contemporary Sunni authorities found objectionable, such as holding whereadherents both menin and women were present. Nevertheless, four religious centuriesceremonies later some Vefai eastern and east-central Anatolia came under the Shi’itizing influence of the Safavids and gradually became part of the nascent Kızılbaş community. Evidence for this has recently been found in a rich body of archival material preserved by Alevi dede families in that region.9 Those Vefais who headed further west towards the Byzantine frontier in the late thirteenth century seem to have evolved in several different directions. Evidence suggests that a good many Vefais in the early Ottoman principality became part of the abdals of Rum, a loose association of itinerant dervishes of many different silsiles, who were known for their strange and scant clothing, their consumption of illicit substances such as hashish and wine, and their open disregard for social and religious norms in general.10 Between the late fifteenth and seventeenth centuries many of these abdals, in turn, became absorbed into the Bektashi order, which had a ‘Shi’itizing’ tendency similar to the Kızılbaş. During the same period, however, other Vefais, or at least their descendants, seem to have ‘come closer to an emerging Ottoman orthodoxy along Sunni lines’.11 We find the perspective of Vefais of the second kind in the chronicle of Aşıkpaşazade (d. after ), who was also one of the sources of the dream narrative mentioned above. The great-great-grandson of Baba İlyas, Aşıkpaşazade was deeply proud of his family’s Vefai past, but he was also a sheykh of the Zeyni order, which was known for its Sunni orientation and was popular at the time, especially with the ulema.12 It must also have been Vefais of the second kind whom the Ottoman scholar Taşköprüzade (d. ) knew in person, and whom he had in mind when he represented the Vefais in the early Ottoman state even more forcefully as ‘shariahabiding’ or ‘orthodox’ dervishes.13 Ultimately, the transformation of the Vefais in the central Ottoman lands cannot be understood in isolation from the transformation of the early Ottoman religious milieu generally. The latter process may have started earlier than presumed, but it was still rather gradual and took some two centuries to be ‘completed’. It has been argued that a defining feature of the early Ottoman religious milieu was ‘metadoxy’, 14 This defineddoxy-minded’. as ‘a state of being beyond doxies, combination doxy-naive and not being point may be abest illustrated of bybeing considering the religious institutions then existing. The endowment deed for the earliest medrese to be built on Ottoman soil, in Nicaea/Iznik, dates from , but the institution might not have been operational until .15 When the Maghribi scholar Ibn Battuta passed through Iznik and Bursa circa –, he wrote no word on the medreses of those towns, but dwelled rather more on the dervishes and especially the ahis, the quasi-mystical young men’s associations he found wherever he travelled in Anatolia. Particularly striking is his description of a gathering he attended in the Ahi Şemseddin zaviye (convent) in
— Sufis in the age of state-building —
Bursa on the night of the Aşure. Religiously normative practices such as Koran recitation, the performance of the canonical prayers (namaz) and preaching were mixed with (from a Sunni point of view) more controversial practices such as sema (a ritual that entailed the audition of music and poetry) and dance ( raks) – all in the presence of the public and of religious and political leaders.16 Such multi-functional convents were a characteristic and popular building type in the early Ottoman period and attest to a social and cultural milieu where different religious and social groups mingled, and where little need was felt to separate the ritual practices of the sufis and ahis from the prescribed rituals for all Muslims.17 Religious fluidity might also have been facilitated ulemaThis by the fact in that found thecase Ottoman lands oftensaid themselves immersed thethe sufiearliest tradition. wasinthe with the firstwere scholar to have been appointed müderris in Iznik, Davud-ı Kayseri (d. ), one of the best-known commentators on the works of the great Andalusian mystic Muhyiddin İbn Arabi (d. ).18 According to the early Ottoman chroniclers, writing in the late fifteenth century but also drawing on earlier oral and written traditions, this seemingly idyllic relationship between the sufis and the ulema (or rather the proto-ulema, identified in these early texts as fakı – from fakih, jurist) first began to show some signs of stress during the reign of Bayezid I (–). In this era the Ottomans made an early bid at empire-building and at centralizing power at the expense of the former Anatolian beys and the frontier warriors (gazis). Sufis were also affected by this development because they had long-established links with the gazis as well as with other Anatolian beys, and because they resented the emerging ulema, most of whom came from the Anatolian interior and staffed the medreses which were then being built at an unprecedented rate.19 To judge by the anecdotal evidence provided in the chronicles, sufi resentment of the ulema stemmed partly from the roles the latter played as agents, allies and beneficiaries of a centralizing state and partly from a clash of values and mores between the peoples of the marches and the hinterland. Sufi discontent with the changing Ottoman regime first surfaced in a messianic rebellion organized in the name of the sufi and scholar Şeyh Bedreddin in , fourteen years after the Ottoman defeat by Timur and three years after the reunification of the Ottoman sultanate. While modern scholars dispute the religious and political ideas of Şeyh Bedreddin, and even his role in the rebellion, there is more consensus on the social, political and cultural profile of the rebels.20 It is highly relevant that the rebellion broke out in the former territories of the Aydınoğulları in western Anatolia and later spilled over to the Deliorman–Dobruja region in the Balkans. In western Anatolia nonconformist itinerant dervishes played a particularly active role as instigators of rebellion, mobilizing poor Christian peasants alongside Turcomans and recent
convertsfrontier to Islam, while in theaBalkans Bedreddin made commonheld causeheterogeneous with discontented warriors. Such heterogeneous group presumably ideas about the nature of their endeavour; nevertheless, contemporary accounts suggest that, at least in western Anatolia, the rebels looked to Bedreddin as their saviour, who would eliminate injustice, abolish all forms of private property and bring together Muslim and non-Muslim alike under his messianic faith. It has been argued that the Bedreddin affair ‘represented the key moment of transition between the unbounded order of multiple forms of worship to the austere world of institutionalized religion’,21 but it is questionable how radical a break the event actually constituted in Ottoman
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religious culture. To begin with, the messiah figure behind the rebellion, Şeyh Bedreddin, was himself a man of multiple worlds and affiliations. While on the one hand, as the son of a Muslim warrior (srcinally of the Karesi principality) and a Byzantine noblewoman, he was a typical child of the frontier, he was also a highly respected scholar who had studied jurisprudence and theology in Cairo before turning to the sufi path. Although his master, Hüseyin Ahlati (srcinating from or otherwise affiliated with Ahlat in eastern Anatolia), was considered highly controversial and even suspected of heresy by the Sunni ulema of Cairo, this had not prevented Bedreddin from being appointed kazasker (chief military judge) by the Ottoman prince Musa upon his return to Anatolia, a telling of the cultural distance the Ottomans from fellow Muslims in thesign Islamic hinterlands. Perhapsthat evenseparated more telling for Ottoman religious attitudes in this period is the fact that, for all the rather bold ideas attributed to him and his followers, ultimately Bedreddin was executed as a rebel and not as a heretic. However, this is not to deny the importance of the rebellion as the first major event which alerted the Ottoman authorities to the dangers that sufis, particularly the nonconformist itinerant dervishes, could pose to public order. Şeyh Bedreddin’s revolt was actually part of a broader wave of messianism that washed across the eastern lands of Islamdom (and beyond) in the late fourteenth and the fifteenth century. The adherents of another messianic group, the Hurufiye, subjected the Koran to a radically esoteric interpretation and denied many fundamentals of Islamic belief such as faith in the afterlife. Hurufis had srcinated in Iran in the late fourteenth century but, after running into trouble with both the Timurids and the Karakoyunlu rulers there, had directed their activities towards Anatolia in the early fifteenth century. There they apparently found a receptive audience not only among some sufis, but also in the person of Mehmed II during his first period of rule (–). By then, however, several of Mehmed’s high-ranking administrators were sufficiently alarmed by the religious ideas and/or the political threat posed by these dervishes to persuade the young ruler to undertake a purge of Hurufis. 22 Finally, as part of the same broad current of messianic fermentation, the Safavids were transformed during the fifteenth century from a nominally Sunni sufi order into a militant messianic movement with an ‘extreme’ Shi’i ideology. Although Ottoman rulers faced the full implications of this development only at the beginning of the sixteenth century, several sources suggest that they had begun to worry about the growing influence of the Safavid sheykhs in Anatolia already by the mid-fifteenth century.23 It would be simplistic to assume, however, that the religious attitudes of the Ottoman ruling elites changed only in response to actual or perceived threats from messianic sufi circles. More broadly, the growth of Ottoman state power, the revival of trade and other economic activity under their rule, and the growth of Ottoman towns had createdofaan much more attractive environment both forsufism. the ulema andofforthese the scholrepresentatives increasingly institutionalized, normative Some ars and sufis flocked to Ottoman lands from the more established Islamic centres of learning in Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Syria, while others were native-born sons, some of whom had also been educated in these more distant centres. All these individuals were instrumental in conveying the norms and values that were deep rooted among the urban elites of the Islamic heartlands, and must also be taken into account when considering the changing religious landscape of the fifteenth-century Ottoman empire.
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In modern scholarship, most of the new orders in Ottoman lands during this period – notably the Bayramis, Zeynis, Mevlevis, Halvetis, Kadiris and Nakşibendis – are labelled ‘Sunni’. This designation is not so much wrong as in need of qualification. First, in the absence of a neatly defined church to dictate ‘right belief’, the term ‘Sunni’ was necessarily more ambiguous and open to dispute than the term ‘Orthodox’ in Orthodox Christianity. Second, even the ‘institutionalized’ sufi orders were considerably less institutionalized than, say, religious brotherhoods in medieval and early modern Europe. Important differences of belief and practice could exist even among the adherents of the same order.24 Third, just as fifteenth-century Ottoman society was becoming socially and culturally religious and doctrinal fluidity still characterized sufimore pietydifferentiated, in this crucial considerable transitional period, poised between the relative ‘metadoxy’ of the fourteenth century and the strident sectarianism of the sixteenth. Consider the case of Eşrefoğlu Rumi (d. –?), the founder of the principal Ottoman branch of the Kadiri order and a self-identified Sunni. In his Tarikatname, a manual written for fellow sufis and sufi novices, Eşrefoğlu explicitly declares the Sunni faith to be superior to others, but he also writes positively of the ‘Alevis’, a term he uses to mean sometimes the descendants and sometimes the followers of Ali.25 Further, he asserts that the ‘perfect master’ ( şeyh-i kamil ) must descend from the ‘House of Muhammad and Ali’, that all must obey him ( ulu’l-emrlik anun hakkıdur) and that those who oppose him may be considered ‘Kharijis’26 and legitimately killed.27 Rapprochement between sufism and Shi’ism manifested itself also in certain beliefs and practices of the self-professedly Sunni sufis: in their silsiles, nearly all of which went back to Ali, in their admiration for the descendants of the Prophet in general and for the Twelve Imams in particular, as well as in their use of symbols commonly associated with Shi’ism (twelve-cornered headgear, black turbans, etc.).28 While some of these features of late medieval sufism survived the confessionalization of the sixteenth century, others did not, at least not without modification. Likewise, the institutionalization of sufism must also be understood as a process begun but by no means completed in the fifteenth century. The Bayrami order is one example. Even though Bayrami sheykhs such as the Yazıcızade brothers Mehmed and Ahmed Bican exercised a formative influence on Ottoman religious culture in the fifteenth century, the early history of the Bayrami order is curiously shrouded in mystery.29 There is little definite information about its ‘founder’, Hacı Bayram (d. ): he left no writing of his own, while his followers provided divergent images of him and his order. The earliest available records suggest that Hacı Bayram lived with numerous followers in a semi-rural setting outside Ankara, supporting themselves through agriculture and sporadically by asking for alms like common beggars rather than living off income from pious endowments like most representatives of institutionalized sufism. Thisofindicates group touched less by and institutionalized more by the teachings code of manliness chivalry that sufism guided and the fütüvveta(the ahi groups) and melamet (the path of ‘blame’, initially a separate path of mystical piety that emphasized hiding one’s spiritual state while outwardly living a life of anonymity and sometimes even of seeming profanity). Also, Hacı Bayram had been the disciple of Somuncu Baba, whose silsile derived from the Safavid sheykhs and who had also been a close associate of Şeyh Bedreddin. The question then arises: how was this seemingly unwieldy group of dervishes transformed into an institutionalized sufi order? The answer may lie in an early brush between Hacı Bayram and the Ottoman authorities.
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Apparently, at some time during the reign of Murad II (–), Hacı Bayram was called to the Ottoman court in Edirne to be questioned about rumours that he was claiming worldly as well as spiritual dominion (saltanat is the word used). By all indications, however, the sufi master was able to allay these suspicions, and he returned to his lodge in Ankara with many favours. This early encounter with the Ottomans may have opened the way for various disciples of Hacı Bayram to establish themselves in the Ottoman Balkans and to gain adherents among the powerful. It also seems that closer relations with the Ottoman authorities led to some fine-tuning and adjustments by these dervishes. These adjustments and accommodations were probably at the heart of the split evident in Bayrami some time after the death of Hacı Bayram. group, under the leadership of ranks the learned Akşemseddin (d. ), evolved intoOne the Şemsi branch of the order (generally considered the Bayrami order proper), developed close links with Ottoman ruling elites and spread rapidly westwards. The other group, led by an artisan, Ömer Dede the Cutler, resisted institutionalization and persisted on the path of melamet, rejecting the distinctive paraphernalia and rituals as well as the dependence on charity which characterized tarikat sufism. This second group of Bayramis appeared in major Ottoman cities to the west only a hundred years later, in the sixteenth century, where they faced persecution and hid their Melami affiliation under different guises. As the Bayrami example illustrates, the institutionalization and domestication of sufi groups were closely related processes. However, the representatives of institutionalized sufism should not be considered simply as agents of a centralizing state. Rather, when Zeynis and Bayramis and, slightly later, Halvetis and Nakşbendis established convents in major Ottoman cities such as Edirne, Bursa and İstanbul, and enjoyed the patronage of leading members of the ulema and the political elite, they continued to exercise a considerable degree of autonomy. The Bayrami sheykh Akşemseddin was, on the one hand, the tutor and a confidante of Mehmed II and a supporter of his campaign to take Constantinople and, on the other hand, profoundly ambivalent about the latter’s decision to adopt the ‘infidel’s city’ as his capital.30 A similar ambivalence about Mehmed’s imperial project is evident in the chronicle of Aşıkpaşazade, who was both a Zeyni and a descendant of prominent Vefai sheykhs.31 In both cases, the ambivalence reflected not only the personal concerns of the sheykhs in question but also the collective concerns of their social circles. The latter included in both cases the frontier warriors, who, like other members of the political elite and contrary to what is often assumed, were patrons not only of ‘heterodox’ dervishes32 but also of seemingly more Sunni-oriented sufis.33 In Ottoman historiography, the reign of Mehmed II is usually taken as the turning point that finally transformed the Ottoman state from a frontier polity, in which the sultan wasethos. only ‘first among equals’, into ita centralized bureaucratic empire with an absolutist In many ways, however, fell to Mehmed’s much less charismatic son and successor Bayezid II (–) to sort out the institutional arrangements that would sustain this newly forged empire. It was also during Bayezid’s reign that the institutionalization of the sufis gained pace. As his epithet Veli (‘saint’, or ‘friend of God’) indicates, Bayezid was known to be pious, with a personal attraction to sufism. His patronage of sufis nevertheless also had important policy dimensions. In his early years, Bayezid was concerned especially to enlist the support of the major power groups within the empire in his struggle to secure the throne against
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a challenge from his brother Cem; influential sufi sheykhs provided him with crucial contacts. Throughout his reign, Bayezid was also concerned to win over various groups alienated by Mehmed II’s state-building and centralization, including the sufis. This concern gained particular urgency after the Safavids under Shah Ismail replaced the Akkoyunlus as the rulers of western Iran in . Bayezid supported sheykhs from a wide variety of sufi orders.34 Interestingly, the chief beneficiaries of his patronage were not the Nakşbendis and Zeynis, who were reputed to be the most Sunna-oriented of the sufi orders and were particularly favoured by the ulema, but the Halvetis. Bayezid’s close relations with Halveti sheykhs went back his daysforas the a princely Amasya, for when the latter had supported him in histostruggle throne,governor but theirinattraction Bayezid probably went beyond this early alliance. Halvetis, like Bayramis, had issued from the same silsile as the Safavids and exhibited strong forms of Alid loyalty even while they remained within the orbit of Sunni Islam.35 This must have made an alliance with them particularly valuable for Bayezid (and later Ottoman rulers) in his attempt to reach out to social and religious groups potentially receptive to Safavid propaganda. It may have been with similar considerations that Bayezid viewed the up-andcoming Bektashis. Historians have long puzzled about the considerable overlap between the religious beliefs and practices of the Kızılbaş communities, who were persecuted as heretics, and the Bektashi dervishes, who were viewed with suspicion but still largely tolerated by the Ottoman authorities. It has been argued that Bektashi dervishes were initially sent by the Ottoman authorities as ‘missionaries’ to properly Islamize the Turcoman tribal population in Central Anatolia but that in the process they had themselves been acculturated into the heterodox, syncretistic beliefs of that population.36 This argument, however, seems problematic for at least two reasons. First, because it (at least initially) attributes an overriding agency to the state when in fact it was only one of several different actors involved and when the mores and predilections of the ruling elites themselves were quite heterogeneous. And, second, because it overlooks the diversity of both the Bektashis and the Kızılbaş in terms of geographic and ethnic provenance. Others, following Köprülü,37 have explained the doctrinal and ritual similarities between the Kızılbaş and the Bektashis with reference to their common religious affiliations, particularly their connections with the abdals of Rum. It is now generally accepted that the cult of Hacı Bektaş, an enigmatic Vefai dervish of the thirteenth century, had initially been the patrimony of the abdals. Accordingly, the Bektashis proper had emerged out of the ranks of these itinerant dervishes in the late fifteenth century, and continued to absorb many of the remaining abdals into their ranks during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Other abdals, however, seem to have resisted Bektashization and instead became part of the nascent Kızılbaş 38
community. The reign of Bayezid II was a key period for the early institutionalization of the Bektashi order. The writing down of the hitherto oral traditions about Hacı Bektaş, the renovation of the lodge of Hacı Bektaş,39 and the reorganization of the administrative structure of the order by the sheykh Balım Sultan all took place around this time. Even though Bayezid’s role in each of these developments remains unclear, his conciliatory policies may have laid the foundation for the subsequent accommodation of various nonconformist sufis under the Bektashi umbrella. However, the growing prominence of the Bektashis was owing also to their links with other socio-political actors. Among
— D eri n T erz iog˘ lu —
Bektashi patrons were the old gazi families of the Balkans, whose powers had been considerably reduced by Mehmed II but who still continued to serve the Ottomans as provincial governors.40 In addition, the Bektashis had established a foothold among the Janissaries, the elite military corps whose ranks were filled with devşirme recruits from among the Christian population in the Balkans. It has been speculated that the Ottoman rulers had encouraged the spread of the Bektashi dervishes among the Janissaries because the syncretistic beliefs and practices of the former were found to be a particularly effective way to Islamize these Christian-born soldiers.41 If indeed the state elites had played a role in this process, they may also have aimed thereby to draw the nonconformist closer to however, the imperial at a time(or, of growing tension between thedervish two. Itmilieus is also possible, thatcentre the Bektashis before them, the abdals) had gained a foothold among the Janissaries independently of any state involvement. The fact that some Janissaries turned Kızılbaş in the sixteenth century or that the tie between Janissaries and Bektashis survived efforts by the central state to replace it with another – the Mevlevi – should indicate that state control over this elite military corps was not as absolute as has been generally assumed.42 Contrary to the prevalent image of Bayezid as a ‘softie’, archival records indicate that Ottoman surveillance of and punitive actions towards suspected supporters of the Safavids had already begun under his rule, around the time Shah İsmail had set himself up as an independent sovereign in .43 Still, Ottoman religious policies did harden considerably following the pro-Safavid Şah Kulu rebellion, which erupted among the Turcoman tribes of the Taurus mountains in and which was joined by a wide variety of disgruntled groups, from timariots to ahis. Within a year, Bayezid was deposed by his hawkish son Selim I (–), who adopted a much more aggressive policy vis-à-vis both the Safavids and Ottoman subjects suspected of being Kızılbaş. Modern historians have rightly emphasized the pivotal role played by the Ottoman–Safavid conflict in transforming the religious landscape of both empires during the early modern period. Some changes were quite dramatic, like the persecution of thousands44 of suspected Kızılbaş supporters and the destruction of scores of dervish lodges and convents that harboured them during Selim’s march through Anatolia, first to suppress the Şah Kulu rebellion and later to confront the Safavids (–). Similar waves of persecution, though smaller in scale, were repeated during later proSafavid rebellions and Ottoman–Safavid campaigns.45 At the same time, however, the Ottoman state did not and could not afford to forget its old policies of containment and accommodation. Even in times of war, the authorities often dealt with Kızılbaş communities in a differentiated manner, executing individuals identified as agents (halife) of the Safavids while subjecting others to surveillance, banishment and a variety of other, lesser, forms of punishment.46 Moreover, persecution or threat thereof was only component of theofOttoman policies of Sunnitization. The state also sought to one reshape the behaviour its subjects by distributing posts and benefits and by conferring or ratifying claims to privileged status. Recently, Canbakal, analysing the Ottoman registers of seyyids, or descendants of the Prophet, has suggested a link between the state’s attempts to regulate the appropriation of this status and its policies of containment directed at the Kızılbaş, for whom descent from the Prophet was of particular significance.47 In addition to these ‘carrot-and-stick’ policies directed at specific religious communities, the state pursued more positive measures which required time to take effect,
— Sufis in the age of state-building —
like the campaign to build neighbourhood and Friday mosques wherever Muslims lived in Anatolia and the Balkans. This policy was closely linked to attempts to enforce communal performance of the five daily canonical prayers by the region’s Muslim population. Strikingly, the mosques built in this period were no longer conceived as multi-functional spaces that could accommodate sufis, ahis and travellers alongside the congregations for the Friday service.48 Rather, guest rooms were now separated from the mosques and built as free-standing dependencies. Along with monasteries and churches, many of the remaining multi-functional convents were also converted into Friday mosques, while some of the dervish lodges affiliated with ‘heterodox’ sufi 49
groups were converted into medreses. Significantly, such changes corresponded with the onset of a more discriminatory attitude among the Ottoman elites towards sufism. This appears most clearly in religio-legal literature, which contains, for the first time, a sustained critique of a wide variety of sufi beliefs and practices as bid‘ats, inadmissible ‘innovations’ introduced into Islamic tradition after the lifetime of the Prophet. Recent scholarship has tended to downplay sixteenth-century attacks on sufi bid‘ats either as the work of a tiny minority among the Ottoman ulema or as campaigns directed specifically at ‘heterodox’ and especially Shi’itizing sufis such as the abdals. In fact, however, not only ‘hardliners’ like Çivizade Muhyiddin Mehmed (d. ) but also ‘moderates’ like Kemalpaşazade (d. ) issued fetvas declaring the use of ritual music and dance during sufi gatherings illegitimate.50 Notwithstanding the nuances between their positions, it proved exceedingly difficult to draw the boundary between the ‘sharia-abiding’ and ‘deviant’ dervishes on this issue. It is true that the central government primarily targeted Shi’itizing itinerant dervishes (ışık), instructing local authorities to prevent them from playing musical instruments and dancing in public. 51 Apparently, however, some local kadis drew a different conclusion from the legal debates and wanted to interfere also with the Halveti devran (zikr ceremonies in which dervishes moved rhythmically in a circle).52 Attempts to negotiate between these groups appear in the fetvas of Ebussuud (d. ). The son of a Bayrami sheykh, Ebussuud is widely regarded as the architect of a new consensus between the Ottoman ruling elites and sufis during his long tenure as şeyhülislam (–). We lack detailed studies of the many compilations of Ebussuud’s fetvas that might clarify the development of his thought on the subject. Nevertheless, when viewed as a whole, his fetvas indicate that even this known compromiser was unable openly to defend the ‘sufi devran and dance’ (raks) as had Ali Cemali (d. ), another şeyhülislam from a prominent sufi family, half a century earlier. Rather, Ebussuud entered into hairsplitting discussions about how it is ‘better’ to practise zikr sitting down rather than standing up, and, if standing up, then at least one’s waist andwhen head,confronted and, if moving waistabout and head, then at least not to move the feet. Only with aone’s question the permissibility of calling ‘the Halveti sheykhs and disciples as well as all who befriended them’ infidels because they practised devran, did Ebussuud respond by saying that there were ‘valuable’ people among them, and that it was wrong to slander people and make false attributions about ‘matters of which one has little knowledge’. 53 As much as he may have strived to protect ‘valuable’ people among the Halvetis and their sympathizers, his fetvas, like those of other sixteenth-century müftis, point to a religious milieu in which such sufi groups as Halvetis, Mevlevis, Kadiris and Bayramis were also coming
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under pressure, if not to give up their controversial practices then at least to modify them, and certainly to practise them more discreetly, away from the public eye. Much the same can be said about the controversies surrounding the teachings of Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, whose posthumous title ‘Sheykh Akbar’ (Greatest Master) nicely captures his high standing among the sufis. While hardliners like Çivizade were no doubt in the minority among the Ottoman ulema for their refutation of this great sufi, it is striking that even defendants of Ibn Arabi such as Kemalpaşazade cautioned that his highly complicated texts were not fit for the eyes and ears of the common folk, who could easily misunderstand them and be led astray into ‘heresy’.54 Hence it was perfectly possible the religious political authorities to and criticize somewhile sufis for expounding on thefor teachings of Ibnand Arabi in ‘improper’ ways contexts, protecting and patronizing others from a wide variety of orders who did the same more discreetly. This is also what got some Bayrami-Melami and [Halveti]-Gülşeni sheykhs into trouble and led to their persecution as ‘heretics’ during the sixteenth century, even as other sufis from the same orders attracted adherents among the ruling elites. It is important to emphasize, nevertheless, that sufis were not only at the receiving end of Ottoman confessionalization policies. They, too, shaped the Ottoman religious landscape in various ways, whether by rebelling, dissimulating, negotiating and compromising or by acting themselves as agents of Sunnitization, a role which became more important in the later sixteenth century. It was not uncommon for sufi masters to acquire a solid grounding in the religious sciences even in the fifteenth century, while dervish lodges had long been major sites of literacy and book learning alongside the medreses.55 Zeyni, Nakşibendi and some Halveti sheykhs had enjoyed particularly close relations and partly overlapped with ulema circles during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. During the second half of the sixteenth century, these existing relations were intensified when, on the one hand, increasing numbers of ulema frustrated by the congestion in the learned establishment left their careers as judges or müderrises for the sufi cloak56 and, on the other hand, a more pronounced Sunna consciousness emerged among the representatives of institutionalized sufism. It is also in this period that the state began to appoint sufi sheykhs, most notably those equipped with religious learning and presumably the appropriate Sunni consciousness, as preachers. Many served as preachers in the neighbourhood mosques adjacent to their dervish lodges, while the privileged few preached in the large imperial mosques in İstanbul, Edirne and Bursa. Sufi sheykhs who occupied these influential posts used them not only to preach their brand of Sunni piety tempered with sufism but also to denounce others who deviated from it, whether the Kızılbaş or other ‘heretics’, like the ‘İdrisis’ and ‘Hamzevis’ (derogatory terms used for Bayrami-Melamis).57 Continuing trends which had srcinated under Bayezid II, Halvetis once again dominated the 58 most influential of these preacherships during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Did this rapprochement between the self-professedly Sunni sufis and the Ottoman ruling elites then signify an end to the -year-long process of institutionalization and confessionalization of sufi groups in the Ottoman empire? This is usually the impression given by the existing literature, which has defined ‘classic’ Ottoman religious culture as a welding together of Sunni (Hanefi) legalism and sufism. However, no sooner was this synthesis achieved than it was also challenged. During the seventeenth century, what constituted the Sunna, the normative example of the Prophet,
— Sufis in the age of state-building —
and who could be considered as part of the Sunni community continued to be hotly debated. Now, however, the main protagonists in this debate were no longer the ulema elite, but preachers, represented by the militantly Sunni ‘puritanical’ preachers known as the ‘Kadızadelis’, on the one hand, and sufi (especially Halveti) preachers, on the other. In the secondary literature, the Kadızadeli challenge to institutionalized sufism has generally been treated as a temporary aberration from the norm, explicable only in the context of the crisis of the central state and its elites in the seventeenth century. 59 Historians have tended to overlook the extent to which this movement was also a sequel to, or an episode in, a long history of Ottoman Sunnitization. Throughout the seventeenth century both the Kadızadelis ands in their adversaries made60 references to sixteenth-century debates on bid‘at order to bolstercontinually their position. Both sides also played out their differences before a broad urban public, whose ways and habits had been significantly moulded by some years of Sunnitization. Significantly, the seventeenth-century controversies testified not only to the tremendous success of that process, but also to the continuing ambiguities and counter-trends among the broader lay public. Not all who were disenchanted with institutionalized sufism turned Kadızadeli; others embraced an increasingly Sunnified Melamism, while representatives of institutionalized orders such as the Halvetis, Celvetis, Nakşbendis and Mevlevis also continued to attract adherents among the urban public.61 Finally, it should be added that neither the institutionalization nor the confessionalization of sufism were processes that were concluded in either the sixteenth or the seventeenth century. Early nineteenth-century attempts to recentralize the empire brought about important sequels to both developments. Also, while this essay has concerned itself primarily with institutionalized sufism, there was at all times more to sufism than a set of more or less formalized sufi groups and whatever they believed and practised. In fact, the spread of the sufi orders in Ottoman cities during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries also helped open up new channels for sufi beliefs and practices and sufi-tinged attitudes and sentiments to be disseminated across the social board and to inform a wide variety of cultural practices from the shadow theatre to poetry. It awaits future studies to take account of these less ‘authorized’ but no less important and creative uses of sufism. NOTES
* The author gratefully acknowledges having been a research fellow at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations during the writing of this article. She also wishes to thank Cemal Kafadar and Ayfer Karakaya-Stump for reading over the text and making a number of valuable suggestions. Karamustafa . Karamustafa Trimingham. ; Meier . For a more extensive discussion of the term’s relevance in the early modern Ottoman context, see Krstic : – and : –. Karamustafa : –; Le Gall : –. Generally speaking, Ottomanists proper tend to privilege explanations based on political expediency and reasons of state, while specialists on Ottoman sufism and particularly the Turkish scholars of sufism, trained in schools of theology rather than in history departments, tend to give primacy instead to religious doctrine.
— D eri n T erz iog˘ lu — As¸ıkpas¸azade : –; cf. Anon. : , where the dream is ascribed to Osman’s father, Ertug˘rul. Kafadar : –, . Karakaya-Stump : –. The first scholar to note the link between the Vefais and abdals of Rum was Gölpınarlı : –, –. Later, the connection was made more categorically by Ocak : –; cf. Ocak : –, esp. –. Kafadar : –. . Inalcık ; Öngören : –. Tas¸köprüzade. : –, ; for similar assessments of the early Ottoman Vefais by modern scholars,: see Inalcık Kafadar . : –; Karamustafa : . Bayrakdar : . Ibn Battuta : –, esp. –. Eyice –; Wolper : esp. –, –, –. As¸ıkpas¸azade : , . . Kafadar : –; Darling : –; Ihsanog˘lu, : , –. Balivet ; Ocak : –; there are some alternative views in Yüksel : –. Barkey : . Babinger : –, based on Tas¸köprüzade (see edn: –). Yıldırım : –, –, –. Le Gall ; Gölpınarlı . Es¸refog˘lu Rumi : , . Literally, ‘those who go out’ – an Islamic sect whose srcins lay in a group of Ali’s supporters who deserted their leader and eventually formed a distinctive sect considered beyond the pale of Islam by both Sunnis and Shi’is. Es¸refog˘lu Rumi : .
See :On x, Alid on the relationship between Sufism Shi’ism a ‘thorny : question’Karamustafa among scholars. elements in Mevlevi beliefs and and practices, seeasGölpınarlı –. Curiously, much less has been published on the Bayrami order proper than on its Melami offshoot. On the former, see Kissling ; Bayramog˘lu ; Bayramog˘lu and Azamat ; and Yurd and Kaçalın . While Gölpınarlı remains a standard reference, for more recent views see Erünsal and . Cf. also Imber ; Ocak : –; and Clayer et al. . Yurd and Kaçalın : –, –. . Inalcık ; Kafadar : –. Kiprovska ; Yürekli : –. Umur : –. Kafesçiog˘lu : –, –; Öngören : –. Kissling . Mélikoff . Köprülü : –. Karakaya-Stump : –. . Yürekli Ibid.: –. On the related argument about the role of Bektashi dervishes as agents of Islamization in the Ottoman Balkans, see Köprülü [–] and Barkan ; there are more recent views in Krstic : –. Yürekli : –. S¸ahin and Emecen : xxiv–xxv. According to some Ottoman chroniclers, , people were killed during the years –, though this estimate appears exaggerated in view of much more modest numbers cited in the
— Sufis in the age of state-building —
Ottoman mühimme registers (Savas¸ : –). However, mühimme registers record only those dealt with by administrative-judicial proceedings; numbers of those killed in battle are unknown. Altınay ; Imber ; Savas¸ ; S¸ener . Savas¸ : –. Canbakal and . Allocation of the mosque exclusively to normative religious practices, such as the canonical prayers and preaching, and relocation of all other functions to separate dependencies had started earlier, with the imperial mosque built by Mehmed II, but his example was not followed by either Bayezid II or lesser patrons of architecture: Kafesçiog˘lu : –, –, .
Necipog ˘lu: :–; –. cf. Terziog˘lu : –. Öngören Altınay : ; Savas¸ : , . Öngören : –. Düzdag˘ : –. Öngören : –. Faroqhi a: –. Öngören : –; Niyaziog˘lu : –. Clayer : –. Zilfi : –; Zilfi : . Zilfi , ; Baer . Terziog˘lu : , –. Terziog˘lu : –.
PART II
OTTOMANS AND OTHERS
CHAPTER SEVEN
ROYAL AND OTHER HOUSEHOLDS
*
Metin Kunt
LIVINGS AND RETINUES
H
ouseholds were the building blocks of the Ottoman political edifice. Therefore the basic unit for the study of the sociology of political life is the household. In a dynastic empire the role of the ruler is rightly accorded central place, and the royal household is the keystone of the edifice. While paying due attention to this imposing keystone, we must not neglect humbler bricks in the walls: the sultan maintained a huge personal staff and retinue, but he also insisted that all his officers did the same, 1
proportionate to their rank and allotted revenues. The Ottoman military-administrative system was founded upon the principle that an officer’s income would support a retinue appropriate to his office. ‘Income’, in this context, meant tax revenues, fines and fees generated in a locality and assigned to an officer. The Ottoman term for such revenue grants was ‘dirlik’ – literally, ‘living’. The holder of a revenue grant was expected to reside on location and to collect his share of agrarian produce as well as ground rent from the peasants. In towns there were market dues on trade and crafts production in addition to small-scale agriculture, orchards and vegetable patches. Larger cities on international trade routes, such as Salonica, Bursa, Aleppo and Cairo, had considerable customs revenues. At the lowest end of the dirlik allotment pyramid was the cavalryman (sipahi), with a basic revenue grant, commonly a village. There he was to live; at harvest time he received his tithe in kind, and he kept the peace in his village, collecting fees and fines for transgressions. When called to military duty, he presented himself to the district commander, ready for campaign with his horse, arms and equipment, all paid for out of his revenue grant. With some seniority and good service on campaign, he might achieve a rise in his basic revenue from an additional source; if his income increase was as much as double the basic grant, he was required to bring with him on campaign an extra fighting man, whom he would also maintain out of his revenue grant. The revenues of a town, as opposed to a village, would be assigned to a commander, both because his income should be higher and because the administration of a town required a more experienced officer; it was rare that town revenues were divided up into smaller livings. Some of the commanders of a district also had duties beyond
— Metin Kunt —
their town, such as overseeing the proper presentation of all revenue grant-holders in the district while on campaign, ensuring that they were well equipped and with the correct number of extra armed men. Commanders might have incomes ten times more than the basic revenue grant and therefore have personal retinues of ten men or so. Each district had a governor-commander in the chief city, with revenues at least a hundred times the basic grant; a district governor might thus be required to have a personal military household of to men on the basis of his official revenues. A district governor who made more out of booty would have a retinue much larger than the expected number. All in all, a district might have to basic revenue grants and ten to for twenty town itcommanders. Therefore, when themost district cavalry was mobilized campaign might field , men or more, of them notforce revenue grant-holders themselves but serving in a commander’s personal retinue. Several districts, perhaps a dozen, made up a province, about twenty in number throughout the realm in the mid-sixteenth century. The governor-general, who held the chief city and district of the province, might have revenues five times that of a district governor and his own personal army also approaching , men. All these numbers are deliberately vague, since there was considerable variation both in geography, from district to district, and in history, from age to age; they merely provide a sense of overall magnitude and proportion. Revenues were estimated, based on past produce and on administrative regulations for each district specifying local tithing and ground-rent rates, as well as enumerating other taxes and fees. They were expressed in akçes, the small Ottoman silver coin called asper in European writings. While the basic revenue grant was a few thousand akçes a year, a governor-general was allocated a million or so. When moving from the provinces to the centre, as a governor-general might do when elevated to the imperial council as a vezir, in the sixteenth century the seven vezirs were each allocated around million akçes; each therefore was required by regulation to have a household of several thousand men. At the apex of this system of livings and retinues was the sultan, with revenues (which he allocated to himself) of million akçes or more and, in the early sixteenth century, a royal household of about ,. We may make some general observations based on this sketchy outline. The Ottoman revenue grant system developed in circumstances similar to feudalism in Europe, when a limited amount of precious metals allowed only a limited supply of coin. The difficulty of transporting large amounts of grain and other agricultural produce, added to a limited market, necessitated that revenues in kind should be collected on the spot and consumed locally. But Ottoman livings and retinues were fundamentally different from European feudalism: the grants were not hereditary, nor were they of fixed location. An Ottoman officer moved about the realm holding different offices in different districts;However, his heirs,insons daughters, inherited his privatemay estate butadvanced not his official status. theand father’s lifetime, sons themselves have in the system. It was therefore allowed that, at least in the case of higher revenue grants, one or two sons may be provided with a small grant at the death of the father, especially if he died in battle.2 As the rank of the officer advanced and the size of his revenue increased, so did the proportion of revenues in cash, because his living included towns with markets and cities with customs revenues. Increases in precious metals, in coin in circulation and in trade, both regional and international, allowed a greater amount in cash to be allocated to higher revenue grants, especially to the revenues reserved for
— Royal and other households —
the sultan. Greater revenues meant larger households; larger households meant greater influence and political power; concentration of the largest revenues and households in the centre, in vezirial establishments as well as the imperial palace, meant greater centralization in the polity. In the first half of the fifteenth century the definitive conquest of Smyrna and Salonica, the main outlets for Anatolia and the Balkans respectively, and the capture of Serbian silver mines helped Murad II (–) strengthen his position as ruler, richer and more powerful than his frontier warlords. The conquest of Constantinople in gave Mehmed II enduring fame as the ‘conqueror’ par excellence throughout the Islamic as well as in early Europe;theit copper also allowed to garner much greaterworld revenues personally. Hemodern then captured mines him of north Anatolia by incorporating the Candaroğlu principality of Kastamonu. His grand plan also involved the elimination of the Genoese from the Black Sea, taking over trading posts not only on the Anatolian coast but also in Crimea, by the capture of Caffa, the main port for export of the grains, furs and dried fish of Eastern Europe.3 Selim I’s capture of Syria and Egypt in – laid the foundations of the ‘magnificence’ of his son and successor, Süleyman. The sultan received a major share of the trade revenues of Aleppo and Damascus, and from Egypt millions of gold ducats directly into the imperial coffers.4 Their treasury thus enhanced, the sultans were able to invest in a brand new navy and also increase their households. ‘HOUSES’ AND HOUSEHOLDS
Ottoman households were srcinally military establishments, made up of troops loyal to their master. In the Muslim tradition of the ruler’s household, the srcinal impetus may have been to create a troop distinct from the dominant ethnic element, tribal Arabs, who had supplied the main fighting force in early Islamic expansion.5 By this means the caliph raised his political power above tribal rivalries in an age when Islamic society was also facing the challenge of becoming truly universal, no longer identified by Arabness. Caliphs recruited captives from the Eurasian steppe, from among peoples whose lifestyle on horseback made them amenable to training as a personal guard. During the several centuries before the emergence of the House of Osman, these mamluk (literally, ‘owned’) guards served their masters, became involved in dynastic politics, founded their own rule, and even established states without dynastic rule but with acclaimed sultans.6 A second distant tradition came from the steppe heritage itself. There young men displaced from their own tribes were adopted by the leader of another tribe as his own men, termed nöker. The eponymous founder of the Ottoman state, Osman Bey (d. ), himself had various men in his modest household, some as kulgrew servitors (thethe Turkish for mamluk ) and as nöker . Thedisplaced Ottomanyoung bey’s household during fourteenth century bysome absorbing more 7 men from other lands and more ‘owned’ servitors. An important development came in the second half of the century, when the bey’s advisors began to claim a fifth share of the spoils gathered by frontier lords in the Balkans and sold in Anatolia, either as a quantity of coin or as a number of men. Scions of Byzantine aristocracy in captured towns were also incorporated into the Ottoman ruler’s palace. Around , an Ottoman ‘innovation’ in recruitment for the palace was devşirme (literally, ‘gathering’) – that is, the forcible removal of adolescent village boys
— Metin Kunt —
for training and education. This peculiar Ottoman practice may have first come about in the frontier zones, where frontier lords could not always distinguish – or did not choose to do so – between what had already been incorporated into Ottoman lands and what was outside and still open to raiding; otherwise it is very difficult to explain the devşirme phenomenon.8 Islamic tradition, which the Ottomans elsewhere followed scrupulously, assigned a specific, protected, if second-class, status to non-Muslims submitting to Muslim rule as zimmis: they paid a head tax (cizye) per adult male, and in return could practise their religion relatively freely, albeit with certain restrictions and impositions. Taking children away from law-abiding zimmis was never a practice condoned or even contemplated the Ottomans. Thisthe is in contrast toofrebellious non-Muslims or those conqueredbefore by force: in those cases, enslavement persons was considered as legitimate as the plundering of property. The ambiguity and fluidity of a frontier zone may have provided the initial impulse and instances of devşirme. Even if this peculiar practice was started by frontier lords, it soon became a royal prerogative. Other households sometimes listed zimmi ‘volunteers’ among their members. Was this a euphemism to disguise what might be termed ‘private devşirme’? Probably not, since such lists also specified other sources for the master’s retinue.9 Contemplation of non-Muslims ‘volunteering’ for service in a household at the cost of conversion to Islam leads to the bigger issue of how devşirme was perceived by the zimmi population in general. Even after the practice was regularized, with certain rules to soften its impact on the non-Muslim peasantry, there can be no doubt that most families felt that they had lost a son not just to an unknown fate but to total alienation. Families hid their eligible sons when a palace official approached their village. His purpose was to choose one in forty boys from the locality, excluding those already married and only sons, and not taking more than one child from each family. At least, such were the established rules. However, it is also true that Bosnian Muslims, conversely, saw devşirme as a privilege that they wanted to share. The palace official on devşirme duty was ordered to ensure both that all eligible non-Muslim boys were presented for inspection and that only Bosnian Muslims who were granted the right to devşirme (and no other Muslim boys) should be taken for palace service. ‘Bosnian Muslims’ were specified as those who had been living there at the time of the Ottoman conquest in the mid-fifteenth century but not later Muslim settlers. The recruiting (collecting) officer had to ensure that, with the exception of true Bosnians, only non-circumcised boys were drafted.10 Voluntary or not, incorporation through conversion into any great household, not just entering the sultan’s service, was a sure way of changing status from that of subject to one of the ruling stratum. What, to many, may have seemed the loss of a son was evidently for some a great future for the child. While joining a grandee household did not necessarily guarantee great fortune, it certainly theservitors possibility of one for those whose brains matched their ambitions. Newlyoffered recruited became Muslim and gained a new identity, served their masters, and rose in political rank under their aegis. Those who served an illustrious master, sultan or pasha over a long period remained associated with him even after leaving his household and gaining independent office. As the sultan’s sisters and daughters were married to vezirs and pashas trained in the royal household, so too the loyal servitors of a grandee were further rewarded by being married into his family. An Ottoman ‘House’ was thus joined at the top with its ‘household’.
— Royal and other households — TRAINING IN A HOUSEHOLD
Boys drafted into royal service or joining a grandee household were separated by ability and inclination. In the case of royal recruits, this selection was done in several stages: in the first instance, brawny but not necessarily brainy boys were apprenticed (as acemioğlanı) to the janissary household infantry; the more promising were then sent to various royal establishments for education and training. For these selections, officers used physiognomy (ilm-i kiyafe), the knowledge of inner qualities apparent in the visage. The initial stage in creating a new person, after circumcision and formal conversion, was the naming: a Muslim should not carry a non-Muslim name or patronymic. They all became ‘sons of Abdullah’ – Abdullah being a common first name but also having the meaning of ‘slave/creature of Allah’, and by extension ‘any person’ or ‘A. N. Other’. For the personal name, as well as the common Muslim names (Mehmed, Ahmed, Ali, etc.), newly converted boys were often given the Muslim form of biblical names (Davud for David, Yahya for John, Isa for Jesus, Süleyman for Solomon, etc.) or heroic names from the great Persian epic Şahname, the Book of Kings (particularly Behram, Rüstem, and Iskender for Alexander). Abdullah could never be the first name of a convert, devşirme or otherwise, although it was often used as a given name in Muslim families; thus not all ‘sons of Abdullah’ should automatically be considered converts.11 A boy who might have been entered in the devşirme register as ‘Dimitri, son of Petro, Albanian, blond, round-faced, tall, mole on right cheek’ now became ‘Hasan, son of Abdullah’, but with all the other attributes recorded in the janissary register. If a ‘Halil’ used to be ‘Vassilis’, was the rhyming coincidental? Was a new ‘Hizir, the ‘green man’ of the Koran (who found the elixir of life) and was conflated with St George lore, Giorgos or or an a György? Did theof naming officer have a senseinofMuslim humour, or srcinally a sense ofa history, understanding trans-cultural connections? The most select of the ‘sons of Abdullah’ came to the central royal establishment, the Topkapı Palace. There they were entrusted to the white eunuchs of the imperial harem, the inner sanctum. The men’s section of the harem was more commonly called enderun, the inner service, to distinguish it from birun, the outer service of the palace, where special guard units as well as royal troops were attached. In the enderun the boys, now palace pages, were at first without any special duties but received basic education under the supervision of the white eunuchs. Later they were divided into several chambers named for the services they performed for the enderun itself and for attending their master, the sultan. Pantry Chamber boys received the meals cooked in the great palace kitchens in the birun and served them to the eunuch tutors and classmates; the Campaign Chamber boys were in charge of laundry duty, especially on imperial campaigns; the Treasury Chamber boys, older and wiser, cared for the valuables in the imperial collections – precious objects, books, luxury cloth and special garments. While they performed these services their education and training continued, under outside tutors as well as the white eunuchs, and including not only book-learning but also palace etiquette. The elite of the palace pages, those who stayed in the enderun longest and were therefore the best educated and trained, were admitted to the Privy Chamber, charged with the care of holy relics of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions brought from Cairo in by Selim I, and in general attending to the wishes and pleasures of the sultan.
— Metin Kunt —
All boys acquired the rudiments of an education; with the exception of a few who had little interest in books, most also pursued studies in languages, literature and history. Ottoman ‘humanities’ was based on Persian classics. The Şahname, the source of names for some of them, remained the most valued reading, with its tales of heroism as well as wise kingship, of good rule based on justice. Persian verses by Sadi and Hafiz, the revered poets of Shiraz, were the exemplars Ottoman gentlemen had to learn well: not only Ottoman sultans but also many officials dabbled in poetry themselves, a few with commendable results. Penmanship and calligraphy were encouraged as much as archery and horsemanship. As at any good school, most of the boys balanced booklearning and field pursuits, some gaining a reputation for knowledge of the arts, while others excelled in sports. THE NEW OTTOMANS
The late sixteenth-century writer Mustafa Ali, deliberating on what made the Ottomans great, considered the blending of races to create a new ‘ Osmanlı man’ to be the secret of Ottoman success.12 Although commoners in Ottoman society, in Anatolia and Rumeli, also experienced a certain degree of blending through intermarriage, voluntary or otherwise, what the writer had in mind was the Ottoman ruling elite. The household system was the cradle of this new elite. Its language was Turkish, but the elite were not, and did not refer to themselves as Turkish. The Turkish ethnic element in the realm was only one among many other ethnicities, and at least until the seventeenth century Turks were deliberately excluded from the royal household. It was cause for scandal that, when Selim II ascended the throne in , he enrolled thousands of Turks from his inordinately large princely army into the imperial Janissary corps. Servitors of the royal household were meant to be a blend, certainly not Turkish. The educated Osmanlı was a Turkish-speaker and a Muslim and therefore a ‘Turk’ in European eyes, but his written Turkish for literature and history was a cultural blend and considerably removed from ordinary spoken Turkish. Persian and Arabic phrases and expressions, even grammatical constructs, infiltrated written Ottoman Turkish, bureaucratic and literary, more so than Latin and French expressions did English. By around , however, not only had literature completely shed the Persian shadow but even religious treatises came to be written in Turkish rather than in Arabic, the language of the Koran and therefore traditionally of religious scholarship. As in Europe, where the title of a book may be Latin while the content is in the vernacular, so Ottoman books often carried Arabic titles and Persian sub-headings but the text would be in Turkish, albeit a flowery one distinct from the language of the Turks among subjects.new Theidentity. Ottoman elite may have seemed Turkish to the outsider, but they hadthea distinct Even the Islam of these new Ottomans could be considered to contain some idiosyncratic elements. Indeed, Turkish settlement in the land of Rum (i.e., Anatolia as the Byzantine Rome) from the eleventh century had given rise to syncretic impulses both in popular Turkish Islam and in courtly culture, expressed mainly through mystic movements coalescing into brotherhoods. The urban culture of thirteenth-century Konya, under Turkish Seljuk rule, was the srcinal setting of Mevlana Jelaleddin-i Rumi, whose descendants and disciples developed his approach to universal godhead
— Royal and other households —
through artistic expression, in poetry and music, in the Mevlevi brotherhood (or ‘way’ in Islamic terminology). Meanwhile, social and political protest movements in rural areas of Seljuk Anatolia had a leadership with a religious tinge and were influenced by pre-Islamic inner Asian practices. By the early sixteenth century, such movements and their dervishes came together under the rubric of Bektashi. These two main brotherhoods, Mevlevi and Bektashi, and others, became active in South-East Europe under the Ottoman aegis and facilitated conversion in both rural and urban Balkan society. But in addition to the conversion of Anatolian and European Christians to Islam, in Anatolia there was the phenomenon of many Turkish speakers as members of the Armenian Greek churches, either Turks speech. converting these churches some Greeks andand Armenians converting to as Turkish All to these various typesorofasconversion, religious and linguistic, as well as intermarriages across ethnicities, helped to create an Ottoman society in its Byzantine-Roman core areas which developed a character distinct from older Muslim areas of West Asia. What was true of Ottoman Rumi/Roman society as a whole was also true for the Osmanlı ruling class and its new converts. For the janissary corps, the Bektashi dervishes became chaplains and guides, promoting an easy-going, tolerant version of Islam appropriate for new converts. The Bektashis even offered an alternate ‘trinity’ in the form of Allah–Muhammad–Ali, and incorporated in its symbolism the number twelve, significant both for Christians and Shi’is. In the palace itself the cultured Mevlevi way held sway; many court poets, musicians and sultans themselves were adherents. Other brotherhoods were also represented, most with music and hymns and rhythmic movement in their services. In the seventeenth century there is even mention of people referred to as hub-mesihi – literally, ‘Christ-lover’.13 Yet the Osmanlı could also be a very devout Muslim. The powerful grand vezir Sokollu Mehmed Paşa (d. ) invited the strict and austere scholar Birgivi Mehmed Efendi to Istanbul, and honoured him. The grand vezir’s piety is attested by his apologist Feridun Bey, although there might have been a political motive, to use the ‘puritanical’ scholar as a counterpoise to the equally great and influential legislator şeyhülislam Ebussuud Efendi. Two generations later, in the mid-seventeenth century, Birgivi’s moral descendants and the followers of his disciple Kadızade Mehmed Efendi divided the palace people as much as they did Istanbul society. When the fundamentalist Kadızadeli movement threatened a massacre of those they saw as lax sufis, they were suppressed by the government, but then the sultan, the palace and the whole ethos of the Ottoman establishment turned quite conservative, at least temporarily. The palace was big enough to include austere Muslims as well as ‘Christ-lovers’.14 GRADUATION
The sultan’s purpose was to train and educate his own men to become the commanders and administrators of his palace and his empire. Pages looked forward to ‘graduation’ (çıkma – literally, ‘leaving’) from palace service, in the first instance from the inner training ground to functional service in the outer courts. Lesser recruits had already been sent to the janissary infantry companies, but palace pages left to fill the elite ranks of the six sipahi, household cavalry, regiments. Daily wages were low, but they were still the sultan’s own troops and as such their master still fed and clothed them in a style befitting the glory of the head of household. Pages who had spent longer in
— Metin Kunt —
enderun service graduated to office in various special guard units (the ‘left-handed’ solak, the ‘fast-runner’ peyk) or to companies in charge of campaign tents ( mehteranı hayme), the military band (mehteran-ı alem) or the stables (istabl-i amire), or were
appointed gatekeepers, kitchen administrators, etc. Those pages who had exhibited an inclination to learning, arithmetic and calligraphy were employed in the scribal service, taking notes, drafting fermans (imperial decrees), keeping account books of revenue grants or imperial accounts. When leaving the palace or re-entering, on extended hunting trips or on campaign, the sultan would be surrounded by troops, officers and secretaries, many of whom he would recognize from their years in enderun service. The second step in çıkma graduation was to an independent office and source of income in the form of a dirlik revenue grant. A simple Janissary would receive a modest grant somewhere in the provinces. Members of the elite cavalry regiments and officers of the various imperial troops expected more substantial revenue grants and even posts in provincial administration. However, the ‘graduates’ of the sultan’s palace were not the only people receiving provincial revenue grants; in provincial service they joined local Muslim-born (and, up to about , even Christian) young men who had volunteered for campaigns, hoping to change status from subject to imperial official. Beys and pashas, district and province governors, not only had their own large households and retinues but also the right to place their ‘graduates’ in revenue grants. In a frontier district up to half the fighting force could come from the district governor’s own retinue.15 Although in theory any sixteenth-century provincial officer could be promoted to a position of command according to merit, most eventual governors had received their initial training in the palace or in a grandee household. The most select of the province governors, those who became vezirs, thus returned to their starting point in the capital. They attended council meetings in the second court of the palace, separated only by the Gate of Felicity from the setting of their earlier years of education in the inner sanctum, enderun/harem of the palace. HOUSEHOLDS BEGETTING HOUSEHOLDS
Before it was the custom for an Ottoman prince to leave his father’s house on puberty (and circumcision) and be appointed governor in a significant Anatolian sancak district. This represented a sedentarized version of the inner Asian tradition of the wider ruling clan sharing in government. In Ottoman practice a prince did not actually share in rule at all, but he did receive training as a potential ruler under the guidance of an experienced pasha. The question of dynastic politics and the tradition of open, competitive succession is best treated elsewhere; in our specific context we should look athousehold how the prince-governor’s household was formed. growing up in his father’s he had no opportunity to choose his ownWhile men; the princely household was composed of people from the royal palace. As a small replica of the imperial establishment but with no musket-bearing infantry, a princely household in the early sixteenth century initially numbered about men, and possibly , later in the century. If the prince grew to maturity and even to middle age at his provincial posts, the household might grow with his own recruits, even with gifts of servitors from various statesmen.16 Even so, a prince’s household amounted to no more than a small fraction of the sultan’s establishment.17
— Royal and other households —
Upon succession to the throne, the successful prince brought his own household and retinue to be (re)incorporated into the royal household. A major ‘graduation’ from the palace also occurred, both to reward service through independent revenue grants and to make room for the new sultan’s retinue, albeit at lower ranks than in the former princely household. Additionally, because in the succession struggle there was only one winner, to ensure strict father-to-son succession the losing prince(s) and their male offspring lost not just the political fight, but also their lives. Their own, now headless, households were also considered royal property. Some servitors were punished if they had been closely involved in the succession struggle, but most were alsoSupplying given revenue grants and palace positions. an initial household from the palace was not confined to royal princes. Upon leaving for the provinces, a senior palace page or an officer of the outer service was also given junior palace servitors to staff his first official household. In such cases relationships formed within the palace played a part. Ethnic srcin, the sharing of a mother tongue, or devşirme recruitment from the same village were all reasons for potential friendship and solidarity in the enderun. Indeed, on occasion palace pages supplied information on specific families and boys who should be considered for devşirme recruitment.18 Palace service also required enderun pages to establish ties with those in the outer service. The Pantry Chamber pages, for example, dealt with kitchen personnel in the course of performing their duties. A senior page leaving the palace would therefore have formed various ties with a group of palace personnel, on personal or professional grounds, whom he would take with him to a provincial posting, as the nucleus of an official retinue to be developed further as he progressed through the ranks. More importantly, there were the white eunuchs, the supervisors and tutors of the enderun, who left the imperial palace for high provincial office as sancak district governors just like royal princes, and some of whom rose to great office, including the grand vezirate. The chief white eunuch, officially titled Commander of the Gate of Felicity, maintained a household even while at the palace. On the death of a certain Cafer Ağa while still in palace office, members of his retinue were listed according to their status and functions and the resulting register presented to the sultan for his decision. As Cafer Ağa was still technically a slave of the sultan, the latter inherited the eunuch’s own slaves, and, as in the case of defeated princes, this inherited retinue was incorporated into the royal household. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is the fact that some of the slaves of Cafer Ağa were already in the palace. The fact that there were subsidiary ‘households’ within the large royal household is significant in showing that, while the sultan was everyone’s master, there were also lesser loyalties to various masters. ULEMA HOUSEHOLDS
The previous discussion has focused upon the royal household and the establishments of the ümera commanders. The military-administrative career was undoubtedly the most important in Ottoman government at its height, but it was certainly not the only one. The men of learning (ulema), studying in colleges (medrese) and following a career alternating between teaching and serving as magistrates ( kadı), formed a second branch of government, fully developed into a bureaucratic hierarchy by the
— Metin Kunt —
sixteenth century. The highest members of the ulema career had in earlier times also been given political positions, some rising to the vezirate. From the time of Mehmed II the vezirate was reserved for the ümera, but the ulema continued to be represented in the imperial council by the two kazaskers who headed the learned hierarchy. Upon elevation to the post of şeyhülislam, the pinnacle of the ulema career, a kazasker ceased to hold his membership in the council; he was now above routine politics. It was the kazaskers who prepared their appointment lists for all ulema positions as medrese lecturers, magistrates and administrators of public endowed foundations. The members of the ulema had personal retinues too, though considerably smaller than those ümera households. Ambitious, bright medrese students were chosen as assistants by in senior ulema and served their masters just as young pages did in an ümera household. As the master rose through the ranks, so did the chances of the apprentice-assistants of appointment to independent office. Senior ulema were allocated posts as medrese lecturers and as magistrates, the number commensurate with their rank, to be distributed to a dozen or so of their protégés. The impetus behind this convention may have been simply recognition of the natural phenomenon of senior scholars favouring their most brilliant pupils. Once the practice became regularized, however, it became absolutely necessary for younger scholars to seek patronage; an unattached man was an unsupported man in the struggle to find appointment. As ümera household membership became a necessary step in attaining a revenue grant, so ulema appointments came to be reserved for protégés. Patronage became indispensible. In other ways, too, ulema households functioned like ümera retinues; when not forming marriage alliances with other high-placed scholarly households, the master chose sons-in-law among his most favoured students.19 In later centuries there was a noticeable shift in the Ottoman style of government, away from those in military-administrative positions to civilian bureaucrats and magistrates. Men from the scribal service or with a medrese education, rather than those trained in an ümera household, rose to the highest positions of government. Bureaucratic patronage ultimately became the most important element in Ottoman politics, until it was deliberately though not altogether successfully breached during modernizing reforms. HOUSEHOLDS IN LATER PHASES
In the seventeenth century, the practice of devşirme recruitment fell into disuse. One can speculate that there were by then too many volunteers for palace service, especially once Selim II had incorporated large numbers of his Turkish princely servitors and troops into the royal establishment in . 20 He had opened palace service to Muslim-born subjects,Ottoman mostly Turks. This waslike a situation by tradition-minded commentators Mustafacriticized Ali, but and into condemned that breach others followed, so that in a few generations Turks became a common sight at Topkapı. During the seventeenth century a second new development occurred in practices of palace service and graduation to provincial office. Palace pages tended to stay in royal service for much longer periods and on leaving the palace were no longer young, but had reached a mature, middle age. Senior members of the enderun, the sultan’s swordbearer and cloak-bearer in the Privy Chamber, routinely went out as full provincial governors, and of great provinces such as Egypt. This may have been partly a result of
— Royal and other households —
the fact that the white eunuchs, supposedly their supervisors, had been downgraded in the palace hierarchy, losing their influence to the black eunuchs of the women’s harem. In this new situation there were no more white eunuchs going out to the provinces as governors. Nor were the new power-holders, the black eunuchs, ever granted provincial office or a seat in the imperial council; they wielded their power from behind the closed doors of the harem. Earlier there had seemed to be no prejudice against white eunuchs as commander-governors, but were black eunuchs only to be trusted indoors? Would they have met with too much resistance in the provinces? It is impossible to know whether there might have been racial prejudice at a provincial post or where whether they themselves preferred to wield power at thenormally centre, within the palace, they might dominate the councils. Black eunuchs left palace service only to retire, usually to Egypt, where they might still have some political clout, but not as office-holders. A further novelty of the seventeenth century was that important officials of grandee households came to be appointed to high provincial office. Vezirs and pashas had promoted their own household members in earlier times, and it was normal for their men to receive revenue grants. The new situation, as in the case of the palace ‘pages’, was that they moved directly from service in a pasha household to important governorships, having held posts neither in the palace nor in lower-level provincial service. Alongside the imperial palace, grandee households thus became a fast track to high provincial office. As for the royal troops, the tens of thousands of janissary infantrymen and the six regiments of household cavalry, the sheer weight of their numbers and the consequent difficulty of paying their wages adequately rendered them dysfunctional. Instead of adjusting their pay for the inflation and silver devaluation experienced during the time of troubles at the turn of the seventeenth century, the sultan and his advisors chose to extend to them certain financial benefits. Household cavalrymen, the senior service, were routinely employed in the collection of royal revenues, for which they were handsomely remunerated.21 The Janissaries, left out of this arrangement, expressed their resentment in various violent uprisings. Ultimately the palace turned a blind eye to janissary dealings in the marketplace. Both in the capital itself and increasingly also in important provincial centres where they were stationed, in Belgrade, Aleppo, Cairo, Damascus and on Crete, Janissaries dominated economic life, especially in the market place. So, while the household cavalry turned into royal tax collectors, Janissaries became artisans and craftsmen. Finally, one can talk of a relative ‘Turkicization’ of the Ottoman establishment from onwards, but this would be a very partial view. Even when Turks and other Muslims infiltrated major households, the ideal remained to include non-Muslims as well. In any case, Muslim-born household members needed to be made ,into cultured ‘Ottomans’, much like non-Muslims. There mayalso have been few but devşirme foreign-born or subject non-Muslims still came to the palace and to other households. By the mid-seventeenth century, Albanians and Bosnians from the western reaches of the empire and Georgians and Circassians from the Caucasus formed the largest groups in great households. The conquest of Crete, completed in after a prolonged struggle, furnished a fresh source of recruits. By there were many Cretans in the harem, both men and women, some of whom rose to great prominence during the eighteenth century.22 Rabia Gülnuş Sultan, the mother of Mustafa II (–)
— Metin Kunt —
and Ahmed III (–), was the most prominent Cretan in Mehmed IV’s harem. During the s, the Greek revolt gave rise to a new wave of slaves. Rebels were suppressed in various localities, most ruthlessly on the islands of Chios and Samos, in response to the massacre of Morean Muslims; Chiote and Samian women and children, lawfully enslaved because they were rebels, filled great households and furnished some prominent Ottomans in later decades.23 As the boundaries of the empire continued to shrink after the Karlowitz treaty of , Hungarians resisting Habsburg rule sought refuge in Ottoman lands. Some kept to themselves in areas allotted to them, but others entered Ottoman service in the palace or inand other households. In the nineteenth century there werewrath further waves of Hungarian Polish immigrants escaping Habsburg or Romanov in the aftermath of the uprisings. Once again, some immigrants kept to themselves, most famously in the Polish Village (Polonezköy) not far from Istanbul. Many Hungarian and Polish leaders converted to Islam and became prominent Ottomans, now not necessarily going through Ottoman households but establishing their own upper-class Ottoman families.24 The household as a socio-political unit came to an end by the mid-nineteenth century with the conscious efforts of tanzimat statesmen to replace the paternalistic old Ottoman way with a new, modern, functional bureaucracy. The Ottoman system that had looked to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European observers wonderfully meritocratic, because it was not aristocratic, now seemed to reforming Ottomans themselves hopelessly old-fashioned and subject to factionalism based on personal interests. As in European societies, the slave trade was abolished, though not slave status as such;25 the bureaucracy came to be organized not around households but in ministries; promotion was to be based on merit and not on patronage relations. Great houses gradually disappeared, and with them households, though patronage, sometimes based on family and household connections, declined much more slowly.26 NOTES
* I thank the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study for their fellowship and gracious hospitality in spring when I worked on this essay. I have discussed revenue grants and households at greater length in The sultan’s servants (Kunt ), chs and ; also in ‘Turks in the Ottoman imperial palace’ (Kunt ). For a grant of , see Kunt : –. İnalcık a; on the economy, see also chapter , by Rhoads Murphey, in this volume. Shaw a. Crone . Jackson ; Ayalon . İnalcık b. Ménage ; Demetriades . Kunt : , n. . The most comprehensive studies of the palace and imperial household remain the works of İ. H. Uzunçarşılı, on household troops () and Ottoman palace organization (). Kunt . Fleischer a: –. Ocak : –; Ocak . Baer . Dávid –: –; Dávid and Fodor .
— Royal and other households —
Fodor and Sudar . Kunt . Kunt . On the ulema career, see Uzunçarşılı ; Zilfi . For additional comment on this, see chapter , by Oktay Özel, in this volume. Darling ; Khoury ; Adanır ; Masters . Aksan . For a fuller discussion, see Findley . The most illustrious Ottoman family of Chiote srcin is the grand vezir Ibrahim Edhem Paşa (d. ) and his descendants, including Osman Hamdi Bey, painter and founder of the School of Fine Arts and of the Istanbul Archeological
Museum.Celaleddin Paşa, a Polish convert, married into a high Ottoman family; he was the Mustafa grandfather of the poet Nazim Hikmet. Erdem ; Toledano . Findley ; Erdoğdu ; Bouquet .
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘ON THE TRANQUILLITY AND REPOSE OF THE SULTAN’
*
The construction of a topos
Hakan T. Karateke
T
hose who received their high school education in Turkey learned from the history textbooks that one of the reasons for the stagnation and decline of the Ottoman empire was the lack of participation by sultans in military campaigns. The section that dealt with this decline usually followed one on the glorious Süleymanic age (– ), and gave either the reign of Selim II (–) or that of Murad III (–) as the beginning of the period of stagnation and decline. Although the absence of the sultan from the battlefront was not necessarily prominent among the many ‘internal’ and ‘external’ factors that were usually listed in this section, it tended to stick in the collective memory of those who went through the Turkish education system. This historical detail was perhaps so salient because it was generally mentioned in connection with the fact that sultans now ‘spent much of their time submerged in pleasures in their palaces’. Such information may have been more likely to capture the attention of a typical teenager, in contrast to the otherwise quite tedious narratives of history. One could justifiably view this chapter as my attempt to set the record straight for at least one of the teachings with which I was inculcated during my high school education. But the situation is actually much more alarming than that. This largely unquestioned explanation, ubiquitous not only in Turkish history textbooks, shows to what degree we may have internalized the standard narratives that have become so much a part of the ‘natural’ paradigms srcinally established on the basis of nothing but historical narratives. While there may be no way around the texts that we have at hand, reading them uncritically and without context is probably one of the biggest obstacles to producing a reasonable historiography of the Ottoman empire. essay will frequent investigate the circumstances surrounding the genesis of the view that theThis increasingly military debacles from the late sixteenth century onwards were caused, among other things, by the sultans’ physical absence from campaigns. While modern historians might dismiss this line of reasoning as insubstantial, they tend not to consider under what circumstances such an explanation could be advanced by Ottomans at the time. I will explore how and why the controversy about the sultan’s participation in military campaigns arose in the late sixteenth century, and how it made its way into twentieth-century textbooks. A survey of how the issue is represented in certain contemporary historical and political works enables us to explore
— ‘On the tranquillity and repose of the sultan’ —
at least some views on the ways in which public opinion was shaped in the Ottoman capital, how the imperial image was promoted and, at times, challenged, and how the concept of rulership evolved over time. Although the topic raises many related questions on the mobility or immobility of Ottoman sultans in general, analysis of these broader questions of how often, how far, where and, most importantly, for what purposes the Ottoman sultans travelled remains for another study. MURAD III’S INERTIA
Mustafa Ali, a bureaucrat of the late sixteenth century, writes rather apologetically in one of his major historical works, the Künhü’l-ahbar, about Murad III’s reluctance to go on campaign. In an extra section composed after Murad’s death in , and introduced by the heading ‘On the tranquility and repose of the sultan’, Ali investigates the reasons for the sultan’s unwillingness to set out on campaign, even though his vezirs were very much in favour of it. Murad III, relates the author, would not budge from the Ottoman capital once he had made the journey from Manisa to Istanbul to be enthroned. Ali dismisses the argument that the sultan had epilepsy and therefore could not travel. He produces an explanation that the sultan’s ‘personal substance’ (zat) required immobility. None of the letters in his name, Murad, had the quality to cause him to move. All of them, says Ali, carried characteristics that would increase his inclination towards the ground.1 At the time Ali devised this hypothesis, the twenty-one years of Murad’s reign, in addition to the eight-year reign of his father Selim II (–), had passed without aMurad’s sovereign having in any military campaign. Discontent inertia hadactively sprungparticipated up already during his lifetime. Ali clearly touches about upon the subject in his Nushatü’s-selatin of , although not as straightforwardly as in his later work. After describing in detail the squabbles between the commanders Lala Mustafa Paşa and Sinan Paşa before they left for the Iranian campaign of , Ali claims that, if Murad had accompanied the army, all the Iranian lands would have been seized and the situation on the eastern front would have been resolved completely.2 Another writer, Asafi, focuses on the same Iranian campaign in his Şecaatname, written in , a few years after the Nushat. He claims that, had the sultan taken the trouble to campaign, then not only the Iranian lands, but all the territories as far as China would have come under Ottoman control. 3 Of course, if the military campaigns of these years had resulted in overwhelming success, the issue of the sultan’s participation would probably not have arisen. The arguments revolve primarily around the fact that, although these campaigns did not end in total disaster, they were far from being clear victories, and were a significant drain on the imperial treasury. No such criticism is known duringpeace the reign Murad’s sor, Selim II. The difference heretois have that aarisen favourable treatyofwas signedpredeceswith the Austrian Habsburgs two years after Selim’s accession and that in , most spectacularly, Cyprus was taken from the Venetians by the commander-in-chief Lala Mustafa Paşa. Ali’s dismissal of the claim that his suffering from epilepsy was an explanation for Murad’s reluctance to go on campaign is clear evidence that the issue was controversial and that various explanations were being openly debated. Salomon Schweigger, a
— Hakan T. Karateke —
Figure . Süleyman in procession through Istanbul, c.. From Pieter Coecke van Aelst,
The Turks in MDXXXIII: a series of drawings made in that year at Constantinople by Peter Coeck
; reproduced
of in Aelst, and published from woodblocks, by his widow, at Antwerp in MDLIII Türkiye facsimile (London, ) and as Gravürlerle I (Ankara, ), plate .
Reproduced here with permission of the Turkish Ministry of Culture.
Protestant preacher who spent four years from to in Istanbul as part of the entourage of the Habsburg envoy, heard about Murad’s disease (fallende Krankheit).4 Aside from his failure to attend a single campaign, Murad did not leave the palace during the last years of his reign. For two consecutive years he failed even to attend the Friday procession to an imperial mosque, a unique occurrence in the Ottoman throne city. According to the historian Selaniki (d. ), a vigilant observer of late sixteenth-century events, whenever Murad wanted to go out for the Friday prayer, he was frightened into changing his mind by allusions to an alleged plot by the Janissaries to dethrone him when he left the palace for that purpose.5 Selaniki’s explanation for Murad’s resistance to going on campaign also cites more directly the strained relations between the sultan and the Janissaries, recounting that the latter several times made bold demands of the sultan personally at the imperial council. As a result, Murad did not trust the Janissaries to support him in the tensions that were likely to arise during a campaign.6 Critical remarks about Murad III’s military immobility make even more sense when one considers his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s itineraries (seetables . and .). Süleyman I and Selim I (–), in stark contrast to their descendant, were among the most militarily mobile of all Muslim sultans of any era. Süleyman went on thirteen campaigns: five times to Hungary, including the Vienna campaign of , and three times to Iran and Iraq, going as far as Tabriz and Baghdad. He was away
— ‘On the tranquillity and repose of the sultan’ —
from Istanbul once for twenty months and on another occasion for twenty-three, and altogether was absent from his throne city for almost one-fourth of his reign; at the time of his death, at the advanced age of seventy-two, he was on campaign in Hungary. Selim I was remembered as ‘seldom sedentary’ k(alilü’l-karar) by the imperial annalist Naima almost two centuries after his death.7 The successful campaigns of Selim and Süleyman were constantly cited as acclaimed examples in order to foster the ideal of a ‘combatant sultan’.8 Their military successes and their desire to be at the war front in person became linked in the minds of many, and laid the grounds for the construction in later literature of a topos about the physical absence of the sultan from the battleground as an explanation for the increasing prevalence of unsuccessful battles, or even of civil unrest. Table . Campaigns of Selim I
Destination
Departure
Duration9
Iran Egypt Departed for Edirne, Died in his tent near Çorlu
March June July September
days days days
Source: Based on Anon. . Notes: Reigned –: , days; approximately , days (. per cent of his reign) were spent away from Istanbul. Selim made a trip to Edirne only two weeks after he returned from the Egyptian campaign (August ) and stayed there for about five months.
Table . Campaigns of Süleyman
Destination
Departure
Duration
Belgrade, Hungary Rhodes Hungary (Mohács) Vienna Hungary (Köszeg/Güns) Iran, Iraq (Tabriz, Baghdad) Corfu Moldavia Hungary (Buda) Hungary (Esztergom)
May June 10 April May April June May July June April
days days days days days days days days days days
Iran (Tabriz) Stay in Amasya Hungary (Szigetvár) Died on campaign, September
EndAugust of April May
days days
Source: Based on Anon. and Anon. . Notes: Reigned –: , days; approximately , days (. per cent of his reign) were spent away from Istanbul. Only his thirteen campaigns are listed here. Occasional trips to Bursa or Edirne for a duration of up to three months are not listed. Süleyman also stayed in Edirne from November to April – i.e., between two campaigns.
— Hakan T. Karateke —
MEHMED III’S SOLE CAMPAIGN
When Mehmed III succeeded Murad III in , the controversy and rumours of immobility persisted. Mehmed’s absence from one of the first Friday processions of his reign ( February ), on account of severe weather, may have encouraged these rumours, although he did appear the following week at the Süleymaniye mosque. 11 The Janissaries were very much in favour of the sultan’s leading the campaign which was likely to set out during the next season. While the army, under the command of Koca Sinan Paşa, was still at the Hungarian war front, the janissary commanders, meeting in their Istanbul barracks, were critical of the fact that this robust sultan, twenty-nine years of age, refused to go on campaign with them, whereas Süleyman had done so even when he was old and sick and had to use a carriage. Janissaries on duty at the palace staged a protest at the next meeting of the imperial council in their traditional way by leaving before the soup. At the end of September they took an oath stating that they would go on another campaign only if the sultan also were present.12 That same day, several kadis and medrese professors created a small commotion during a sermon at the Süleymaniye mosque by accusing not only the sultan, but also the ruling elite, of passivity in the face of insults such as the capture of Muslim families after the fall of Esztergom castle in early September. 13 At the beginning of November, the preacher of the Ayasofya mosque was sent to the palace to deliver a moving sermon on the Islamic duty of ‘commanding right and forbidding wrong’. Mehmed III burst into tears.14 Discussion on this subject probably continued throughout the city during these months. On December, Koca Sinan Paşa was appointed grand vezir for the fifth time, and on he invited senior religious authorities, including chief mufti andtheDecember chief military judges the of Rumeli and Anatolia, to a lavish banquetthe to discuss the issue. This occurred despite the fact that Sinan Paşa’s dislike of the ulema was apparently no secret.15 The party initially rejected the idea of the sultan himself going on campaign, citing the practical difficulties of raising an appropriate army, in terms both of the necessary number of soldiers and of the splendour that a campaign featuring a sultan would require. They also raised the example of the last two sultans, who had successfully guided Ottoman armies from the throne, via commanders, and had even conquered new lands. A group of ulema reasoning about the number of soldiers might seem strange in another context, but in this case it indicates the extent to which the issue had become a public concern. What this group of high-ranking religious figures actually had in mind when arguing against the presence of the sultan on campaign, and whether there were ulterior motives for their position, cannot be established from the documentation at hand. However, it is quite likely that this was not the recommendation that Sinan Paşa was aiming for when he arranged the banquet. By some unclear means, towards the end of the meal opinion shifted in the other direction, and the meeting finally concluded that, if enough supplies and provisions could be dispatched to the front, it would then be appropriate for the sultan to set out with the army.16 According to Baron Wratislaw of Mitrowitz, a Habsburg diplomat imprisoned in Istanbul during this time, Sinan Paşa capitalized on the general discontent of the Janissaries and sipahis (palace cavalry) by further inciting them to complain. They reportedly submitted a petition to the sultan during a Friday procession, ‘requesting him to
— ‘On the tranquillity and repose of the sultan’ —
go to Hungary against the Christians, and follow in the footsteps of his predecessors’.17 While deliberations continued, Sinan Paşa entered Mehmed III’s presence and advised the sultan that it would be utterly wrong to send the army to the battlefront under a commander-in-chief who was merely the grand vezir or one of the lower-ranked vezirs. If the grand vezir was sent as commander, his deputy (kaimmakam) in Istanbul would purposely withhold further soldiers and provisions from the army in order to cause the grand vezir to be unsuccessful, in the hope of damaging his reputation and ultimately replacing him. If another vezir was appointed commander, the grand vezir himself would not want him to succeed and thereby become a possible contender for his own position. higher authority such18asSuch the asultan to allofthese problems,Asuggested Sinan Paşa. view himself evidentlywould arosebe as aa solution consequence the behaviour of contending commanders-in-chief in previous campaigns. Sinan Paşa is generally depicted in Ottoman chronicles as trying to persuade the sultan to go on campaign out of fear of carrying the responsibility for a likely disaster entirely on his own shoulders. He had barely escaped execution for his failures during the defence of Esztergom and other castles a few months previously. Further criticism from other authors indicates that discontent about the commanders was prevalent. Ali’s views on the sultan’s military inertia suggest that it was not only the idea of the sultan remaining in Istanbul during a campaign to which the bureaucrat was opposed. He was also troubled by a related development, namely that the military commanders were becoming too powerful on account of the awe they created around themselves, and that they were intruding into spheres to which they otherwise had no right, such as the appointment of judges. In Ali’s critical, perhaps over-sensitive view, this had developed into something like a ‘dictate of commanders’ (serdarlar saltanatı).19 Hasan Kafi, himself present on the Eğri campaign, had few good words to say about the Ottoman military commanders. In his treatise on statecraft, Usulü’l-hikem, which he rewrote in the euphoria after the campaign’s success, he warns the sultan not to trust anyone other than himself and recommends that the sultan in person, and not the commanders, who were often negligent, should inspect the army before a battle. His advice, though offered indirectly, was that the sultan should lead the army in person on campaigns.20 However, it appears that there was another faction in the palace, led by Mehmed III’s mother, Safiye Sultan, which was vehemently opposed to Mehmed’s going to the battlefront. Although Baron Wratislaw’s assertion that she had claimed, ‘relying upon the Alcoran’, that ‘no new sultan shall be obliged to go to war for the space of three years’ is probably incorrect, it nevertheless accurately reflects her position in this matter.21 Mehmed perhaps hoped to assert his authority over his very influential mother by personally leading a successful campaign that would build up his charisma andThe aura. grand vezir Sinan Paşa died in April , and Mehmed III himself led the army to Hungary, as a result of which the fortress of Eğri (Eger) was captured and a victory secured over a combined Habsburg–Transylvanian army at the battle of Haçova (Mezőkeresztes). According to Ottoman narratives, after the fall of the Eğri fortress, when news spread that the Habsburg army was approaching, Mehmed wanted to dismiss his army and return to Istanbul. He also showed signs of wanting to flee the Haçova battlefield when the Ottoman army initially appeared defeated. However, in the end, as narrow a victory as it turned out to be, Haçova did validate the formula at
— Hakan T. Karateke —
this particular moment: when the sultan came along, victory was assured. Talikizade, participating in the campaign as official historiographer, states that the thirty-yearplus hiatus in sultan-led campaigns had resulted in the amassing of munitions by the enemy, assaults on Muslims, and the vanishing of the awe they felt vis-à-vis the sultan.22 Now victory was secured. After returning to Istanbul, Mehmed assured his vezirs during the Friday prayer that he would campaign again. His words quickly reverberated throughout the city, and even caused market prices to rise.23 However, although Mehmed spread similar rumours later in his reign, especially when his rule became insecure, the Egri expedition remained military campaign. treaty His successor, did not campaign at his all.only While the Zsitvatorok of Ahmed with theI (–), Habsburgs stabilized the European front, the celali revolts and Safavid wars in the east dominated the next few decades for the Ottomans, but it was not until that another sultan, Osman II (–), again led the army in battle. Subsequently, other seventeenth-century sultans – Murad IV (–), Mehmed IV (–) and Mustafa II (–) – did lead relatively successful campaigns (see table .). It seems safe to assume that a new kind of rulership was already in the making by the late sixteenth century, whereby the practice of imperial seclusion now widened to include the sultan’s military activities. This may have derived partly from the personalities of Süleyman’s immediate successors or from special circumstances surrounding their reigns. Yet, resistance to this development from various groups forced Mehmed III and, later, his successors to be militarily more active. It did not take much effort for the general public to be aware of the sultan’s immobility and to turn it into easily manipulable common knowledge. It was then used as a political argument when the need arose, and, once the issue became the subject of open debate, it gained more political weight, hindering or delaying evolution in the idea of rulership. SUBSEQUENT RECEPTION
This debate probably remained vivid in the political and public memory for some time. It was handled in some detail by certain seventeenth-century chroniclers, who used narratives contemporary to the events as sources, though others passed over the subject in silence. An association of military failures with the sultan’s not leading the army may thus have remained a conviction for some, especially those close to janissary circles. Whenever futile military campaigns multiplied, discontent arose in some sections of society. An uneasy desire to quell any anxiety on this topic perhaps ensured that, when a sultan did participate in military campaigns, it now became the subject of extraordinary emphasis. According to Silahdar Mehmed, for instance, no other sultan ever made grandiose heroic for an the appearance as campaign did Mehmed IV at24a parade in Edirne thataspreceded hisand departure Kamaniçe in . Neither Veysi’s Habname nor Mustafa Safi’s Zübdetü’t-tevarih, both of which were written in the s, contains a discernibly critical view on the issue of the sultan leading the army. In fact, Safi, an imam at the imperial palace, whose book is an extreme example of panegyric historiography, cites Mehmed III as an ideal sultan with respect to his decision to go on the Eğri campaign. He claims that no other sultan had ever attained or even come close to attaining the good reputation that Mehmed acquired by protecting the honour of the sultanate with this campaign. 25 Only a decade or so
— ‘On the tranquillity and repose of the sultan’ — Table . Campaigns after Mehmed III (setting off from Istanbul or Edirne)
Ahmed I (–)
Pest (Austria) (+) ‘East’ (Safavids) (~) Esztergom (Austria) (+) ‘East’ (Safavids) (~) – Revan (Safavids) (–) Ardabil (Safavids) (~) Mustafa I (–) None Osman II (–) * – Hotin (Poland) (~) Mustafa I (–) None Murad IV (–) Baghdad (Safavids) (–) – Hemedan and Baghdad (Safavids) (–) ‘East’, against the Safavids, who laid siege to the castle of Van; campaign downgraded when siege is abandoned. * Poland; campaign abandoned at Edirne when agreement is reached with the Poles. * Revan (Safavids) (+) * – Baghdad (Safavids) ( +) İbrahim (–) Azov (Russia) (+) – Crete (Venice) (~) Mehmed IV (–) Transylvania (+) Uyvar/Neuhäusel (Austria) (+) – Crete (Venice) (+); sultan decides to join the army in August , sets off from Edirne, but receives the news of the fall of Candia on the way and proceeds to Salonica. * Kamaniçe (Poland) (+) * – Hotin (Poland), Ukraine (~) * Czehryń (Russia); (+); sultan leads the army as far as Hacıoğlupazarı and stays there for three months. * Russia ( ~); peace agreement signed before the campaign begins. * Vienna (–); sultan leads the army as far as Belgrade and stays there for five months. Süleyman III (–) * Austria (–); sultan leads the army as far as Sofia. Ahmed II (–) Belgrade (Austria) (+) Peterwardein (Austria) (~) Mustafa II (–) * Lippa, Lugos (Austria) (+) * Timişoara (Austria) ( +) * Zenta (Austria) ( –)
Notes: * sultan leads the army campaign in a foreign state; sultan does not lead the army + victory – defeat ~ drawn battle: no clear outcome, or peace treaty
had passed since the controversy surrounding this topic, and what Safi meant by such an allusion must have been easily grasped. Veysi, on the other hand, a kadi by profession, who presented his advice treatise to the grand vezir Nasuh Paşa, does mention the recurring futile campaigns on the eastern front as the greatest public concern of these years, but he does not even implicitly mention the sultan’s failure to lead the army as a cause.
— Hakan T. Karateke —
A direct reference to the issue is found only in the anonymous Kitab-ı müstetab. This book, which was probably written around by someone of devşirme srcin and in all likelihood sympathetic to the Janissaries, is an advice treatise and uses this rhetorical format to bring several issues to attention. Seven questions addressed in the addendum of the book to a fictitious group of members of the ruling elite are placed in the mouth of the sultan. The first question enquires whether the reason for the rising Safavid threat and unrest in Anatolia could be that the sultan had not personally been leading campaigns to Iran.26 One would expect that such concerns, whether widespread or not, would subside after II’s Hotin campaign in andand disappear the.). mid-s, with MuradOsman IV’s successful campaigns to Revan Baghdad (see by table Indeed, Koçu Bey, writing in the s, does not raise the issue as a problem, but mentions Süleyman I’s participation in campaigns only as part of his efforts to gather information about his subjects.27 Katib Çelebi’s Düsturü’l-amel, also written during the s in the tradition of advice treatises, does not touch upon the issue at all. However, a decade later, when Hezarfen Hüseyin is gathering laws pertaining to state institutions in his Telhisü’l-beyan (–), he regards both options, namely either the sultan or a commander leading a campaign, as equally valid. Telhis may be regarded as a different genre, since it is a compilation of legal material, which often had a timeless language repeating previous wording. However, Hezarfen Hüseyin made the compilation for an audience other than lawmakers or jurists, and often rearticulated other laws in his own words and integrated them with contemporary views. The laws of campaigns: first, it is clear that the greatest task of the sultan is to conquer lands, to drive away the enemies, and fight those whom we are required to fight. This task is carried out either by the sultan going on a campaign in person or by him appointing someone trustworthy from among the vezirs or commanders as a commander-in-chief over the army.28 The sources quoted above indicate that sensitivity on the subject was high at the end of the sixteenth century, gradually receded during the course of the seventeenth, and by around was accepted as one of two alternative practices of campaign leadership. Such evidence suggests that the debate and the sensitive public opinion about the sultan’s going on campaign were context-specific. The debate should therefore be understood in its contemporary context, and not necessarily as a continuing issue. RESURGENCE OF DEBATE
While thorough examination the historiographical of the eighteenth centuryamay help produce a moreofaccurate perspective on literature the changing perceptions of this issue, the actual discussion seems to have faded away. However, the topos resurfaced in modern Ottoman and Turkish historiography. Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, some historians dealt with the issue within the larger development of a modernist, positivist, disenchanted and anti-monarchical worldview. Historians in this tradition first judged ahistorically the sultan’s failure to lead military campaigns as non-compliant with the standards of the modern world, and eventually came to view this as one of the reasons for the decline of the Ottoman empire. Among
— ‘On the tranquillity and repose of the sultan’ —
others, Frederick II of Prussia and Napoleon Bonaparte enjoyed great reputations in the nineteenth-century Ottoman military imagination as ideal enlightened leaders who also frequently led their armies personally. Hayrullah, in his History of the Ottoman state, a much admired work of its time (published between and ), philosophizes at length about the benefits of the sovereign’s being at the war front. In his view, it was beyond doubt that the Egri campaign would have been unsuccessful had the sultan not been there. Hesees an additional force in the sultan’s person which infuses ‘firmness and fortitude ’ into the soldiers. After listing examples from ineffectual campaigns in which Murad III and Mehmed III did evaluatesand thewell-regulated issue from thecountries perspective civilization: evennot the participate, sovereigns ofHayrullah cultured, civilized ( of, temeddün , terbiye nizam) were now present in person on the battlefield. The crux of his argument is that the sovereign’s being at the war front should not be considered ‘Bedouinism’, a concept frequently used in opposition to ‘civilization’ in the second half of the nineteenth century.29 By handling the issue within the political and cultural terms and concerns of his time, Hayrullah clearly brings a totally new perspective on the controversy. Another historian who touched upon the issue is Abdurrahman Şeref, whose History of the Ottoman state was written as a course book for schools of higher education in the early s. Şeref was also the last person to occupy the post of imperial annalist of the Ottoman empire. However, his reference to the issue is neither explicit nor presented in the framework of a decline paradigm. The relevant section in the first edition of his book describes the deliberations of Mehmed III over whether to lead the Egri campaign: Sultan Mehmed III prepared himself to go on the campaign in person. The crescent of the imperial standard, which had withdrawn itself into the shadow of silence since the time of Sultan Süleyman, [rose] again from the horizon of the Divine guidance and illuminated joyful eyes. 30 A curious approach to the issue comes from Mizancı Murad, in his Tarih-i Ebü’lFaruk. The book is a popular history written by a journalist. Murad often colours his
narrative by filling in the inevitable blanks quite imaginatively and by freely inserting several unfounded claims. Although otherwise adhering to a demystified worldview which no longer tolerated a predestinarian historical approach or astrological explanations for events, Murad’s depiction of the issue can best be understood as a product of his dramatization skills. When dealing with the reign of Mehmed III, he depicts a general situation of despair in late sixteenth-century Ottoman society.31 According to his narrative, after the fall of Esztergom castle in September , which indeed caused profound public many unease,strange ‘there signs was mourning and grief earthquakes and floods occurred, were observed, sucheverywhere, as the sighting of fish that had not been known before, and water turned black as ink in some places’. 32 Yet, ‘a miracle happened among all this confusion. A divine sign which was particular to the Orient appeared’.33 This miracle was Mehmed III’s decision to lead the army to Eğri. The labelling of this decision as a miracle was the result of Murad’s conviction that ‘the order of the army was disbanded since the sultans stopped going on campaigns’.34 He presented this as the only miracle in the entirety of his portrayal of a miserable period.
— Hakan T. Karateke —
While the issue was treated from diverse perspectives by widely read, late Ottoman historians, Hayrullah and Mizancı Murad seem to have a common thread in their approach. A self-orientalizing angle can be detected in their treatment of this historical event. Hayrullah feels compelled to evaluate the event in respect to its compatibility with the requirements of civilization in general and uses such loaded words as Bedouinism, thus clearly positioning himself within the common Orientalist discourse of the time. Mizancı Murad also uses Orientalist images, referring almost humorously to divine signs and miracles in his narrative of Mehmed III’s participation in the Egri campaign. Significantly, neither of these historians attempted to present the issue within discourse. a viewpoint emerged only in Republican period. The firsta declinist history textbook of Such the Turkish Republic, designed forthe high schools and published in , defined the parameters of this paradigm for decades to come. Under the section headed ‘The main reasons for the period of stagnation’, the book states: In the absolutist Ottoman state, the ruler was the executor of the state affairs and the commander of the army. The sultans since Selim II – except for one or two – did not go on a campaign with desire or ardour. Thereafter, the sultans and the princes withdrew themselves into the palace and spent their lives among women and eunuchs.35 [emphasis in srcinal] One of the most influential general history books in popular as well as academic history writing in Turkey, İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı’s Ottoman history reproduces this view in similar words.36 While it is clear that Uzunçarşılı wrote within the Republican discourse in terms of how he presents the issue, it is likely that he consulted the srcinal sources as well. A manuscript copy of Kitab-ı müstetab, quoted above as one of the most explicit criticisms of the sultan’s general reluctance to lead campaigns, was found in Uzunçarşılı’s private library.37 Later, several generations of pupils at Turkish high schools would be taught history from textbooks written by Emin Oktay, who also shared this view.38 A quick glance at more recent textbooks shows that the perspective has persisted.39 This view has even found its way into a general history of the Ottoman empire in the English language.40 CONCLUSION
While the sultan’s presence on the battlefield probably had a limited effect on actual military tactics, there is no doubt that it was a tremendous boost to the soldiers’ morale. This was especially critical at a time when the outcome of battles depended highly on personal combat skills. Moreover, perhaps partially based on convictions about divine assistance a sultan-led campaign, campaignsoutcome. carried out under the sultan’s commandtoraised expectations of a victorious Following Osman II’spersonal unsuccessful Hotin expedition, İbrahim Peçevi, a contemporary historian, concluded the narrative of this campaign in his History with the thought that it was surely a warning sign from God that the Ottomans were not victorious despite the fact that they had fought with two sovereigns, namely Osman II and the Crimean Khan, against the Poles, whose king was not even on the battleground.41 Furthermore, the material allowance for a sultan-led campaign usually surpassed the budget of a regular campaign. Going back to the arguments made during the
— ‘On the tranquillity and repose of the sultan’ —
banquet at Sinan Paşa’s mansion, the initial course of action eventually agreed by the high ulema was immediately to send ample ammunition and provisions to the front as a preparation for the Egri campaign. A sefer-i hümayun (or hünkar seferi, a campaign in which the sultan personally took part) was always equipped with much more abundant material provisions in addition to the necessary ‘imperial splendour’ ( tecemmül-i saltanat) required.42 No doubt such a well-equipped and better-organized military expedition had many favourable implications for the army as a whole, which would also justify the belief that the sultan’s leading the army on campaign had the potential to affect its outcome positively.43 Themany equation nevertheless far from straightforward. wereseveral obviously failedwas campaigns in which thebeing sultansohimself took part,There whereas others led by a commander-in-chief other than the sultan turned out to be overwhelmingly victorious. The perception that, from Selim II onwards, the Ottoman sultans’ no longer leading military campaigns is one of the reasons for Ottoman decline is, whether plausible or not, characterized by historiographical defects. A context-specific sensitivity in public opinion regarding this matter did indeed arise at the end of the sixteenth century, and a general debate on the causes of the not very successful military campaigns of that time did take place. The theme remained vivid in the political and public memory at least until the s and was reflected in some, but not all, contemporary historiography. By the mid-seventeenth century the debate had subsided, and sensitivity to it gradually disappeared. On the other hand, many seventeenth-century sultans again led the army in person on actual battlegrounds. A variant also practised by these sultans was to lead the army to a principal stage (such as Belgrade or Sofia) on one of the Ottoman viae militares and to quarter there until the return of the army. Clearly, neither this latter formula nor the leadership of an able commander-in-chief (such as a member of the Köprülü family) was seen as a problem, or at least not one that was important enough to be invoked in the explanations for failed campaigns of the seventeenth century. Yet, that context-specific debate was reproduced first in late Ottoman historiography, and then in republican Turkish historical writing, in different contexts but with little reference the srcinal circumstances. Republican historiography presented the subject matter of a genuine discussion teleologically as a factor in loss of military strength, even a general decline, of the Ottoman empire from the late sixteenth century onwards. Controversial views were attributed to a period later than the one in which discussion actually occurred, a practice most probably imported into republican historiography initially by quotation of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Ottoman works. In effect, incautious use of such views was no different than the similar reproduction of other factors of decline – indeed, the entire decline paradigm – from Ottoman works into of Turkish republican historiography. However, the appearance this topos in differing contexts results in its being more than just a repeated stereotype. It also holds clues to how concepts of rule in the Ottoman empire changed. Around the last quarter of the sixteenth century, as the sultan was becoming a militarily less mobile ruler, the challenges he faced because of this development delineated the limits of his authority. The political conjucture, agendas of pressure groups, and resulting public opinion forced some sultans to be militarily more active than they might have wished to be. Subsequent perspectives on the same string of incidents offer us a comparative insight into how expectations of sultanic
— Hakan T. Karateke —
rule evolved over time. While the seventeenth century saw the delayed acceptance of evolution in the military role, notions of rule among the Ottoman intelligentsia in the nineteenth century were shaped by modern disenchanted and anti-monarchical worldviews. Study of Ottoman perceptions of going on campaign and the sultan’s military role therefore has much to contribute to the history of political thought in the Ottoman world. NOTES *
‘Der huzurII,u –. rahat-ı hakani’, Mustafa Âli on Murad III (Âli : II, ). Âli : Âli : –. Asafi Dal Mehmed : fol. a. Schweigger : . Selaniki Mustafa Efendi : II, . Ibid.: I, . Naima : II, . E.g., Peçevi : II, ; Hezarfen Hüseyin : . Some dates are disputed, hence durations are approximate. Army leaves on July. Selaniki Mustafa Efendi : II, , . Ibid.: II, , . Ibid.: II, . Ibid.: II, –. Âli : III, . Selaniki Mustafa Efendi : II, –. Wratislaw : –. Hasan Beyzade Ahmed : II, –. This argument found its way into later historiography: e.g., Peçevi : II, ; Katib Çelebi –: I, ; Naima [–] –: I, –; d’Ohsson : . Âli : –. Hasan Kâfi el-Akhisarî : –. Wratislaw : . Talikizade Mehmed Subhi : ff.; Woodhead : . Selaniki Mustafa Efendi: II, . Silahdar Mehmed : : also quoted in Doğru : . Safi : II, –. Anon. : –. Koçi Bey risalesi : . Hezarfen Hüseyin –: ; Hezarfen Hüseyin : . Hayrullah : XIV, –. Abdurrahman Şeref –: II, . The second, more concise edition omits the section referring to Süleyman and simply says: ‘Sultan Mehmed III decided to go on the campaign in person’ (Abdurrahman Şeref –: II, ). Mehmed Murad : . Ibid.: –. Ibid.: . Bu kargaşalık arasında bir mucize vaki oldu. Şarka mahsus bir ruhaniyet numunesi baş gösterdi. Ibid.: , –. Tarih III : –. Tevakkuf devrinin başlıca amilleri: . . . Mutlakiyetle idare edilen Osmanlı devletinde, hükümdarlar devlet muamelâtının nâzımı ve ordunun kumandanı idiler. Selim II. den itibaren padişahlar – bir ikisi müstesna – heves ve gayretle sefere çıkmamışlardır.
— ‘On the tranquillity and repose of the sultan’ —
Bundan sora [!] padişahlar ve şehzadeler tamamen saraya kapanmışlar ve ömürlerini kadınlar ve haremağaları arasında geçirmişlerdir. Uzunçarşılı : . Uzunçarşılı : . Oktay : . Kara : , mentioned among the ‘internal causes of Ottoman decline’. Shaw : –, quoted among ‘the political and military factors of decline’. Peçevi : II, . My thanks to Murat Yaşar for this reference. Selaniki Mustafa Efendi: II, . However, some sources present the financial aspect of campaign preparation as one of the reasons for the Ottoman administration’s reluctance to organize a sultan-led the grand vezir Boynu Yaralı Mehmed Paşa persuaded Mehmed IV to abandon the campaign: idea of campaigning in by arguing how much more expensive it would be if the sultan were present (Naima : IV, , though there may have been other reasons not mentioned by Naima).
CHAPTER NINE
OF TRANSLATION AND EMPIRE Sixteenth-century Ottoman imperial interpreters as Renaissance go-betweens
Tijana Krstić
O
ver the last decade scholarship on the early modern era has begun to recognize the Ottoman contribution to cultural processes such as the Renaissance, humanism and ‘confessionalization’, once thought of as uniquely European. 1 With this new interest in integrating the Ottomans into the study of early modern European and world history also came curiosity about a variety of cultural intermediaries who helped construct shared conceptual frameworks across geographic, cultural and religious boundaries. Captives, converts, merchants, sailors, travellers, artists and diplomats have become central to investigations into the mechanisms of cultural exchange and the 2nature of boundaries which were both created and transgressed in the early modern era. Although professional translators, as cultural intermediaries par excellence, have long attracted the attention of scholars, until recently their activities were considered mostly from the perspective of political and diplomatic history. Their backgrounds, social networks and relationship to the centres of power, the translation ‘regimes’ that they adhered to and the subjective conditions in which they produced translation are only now being recognized as important aspects of historical study on translation and cultural mediation.3 The present essay examines Ottoman attitudes towards translation and cultural mediation in the era of imperial expansion and consolidation in the sixteenth century, especially during the reign of Süleyman (–). It will engage literature on circulation of information, texts, objects and people in the early modern Mediterranean through the careers and writings of three sixteenth-century Ottoman imperial interpreters: Yunus Bey (d. ), Mahmud Bey (d. ) and Murad Bey (d. late s). All three were converts to Islam engaged not onlyimperii in translation between languages and cultures but also in thewho project of translatio central to the articulation of Ottoman imperial ideology and the sultan’s claim to inherit the universal sovereignty of the Roman emperors. These men were true Renaissance go-betweens, whose written works were informed by intellectual developments in Europe and synthesized a classical cultural and historical heritage of both Muslim and non-Muslim provenance into unique visions of Ottoman imperial identity.
— Of translation and empire — EARLY MODERN OTTOMAN TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSLATORS: THE PROBLEM OF
TERCÜME
Translation in the early modern Ottoman period has become only recently a legitimate subject of study, not only for historians but also for literary scholars and philologists.4 Although it has long been recognized that the process of translation from Arabic and Persian into Turkish was central to the development of Ottoman Turkish language and literature between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, the social mechanisms and strategies that informed this process are only now being investigated. Borrowingonmethodological andmedieval theoretical tools from translation studies, severalempire recent works translation in late Anatolia and the early modern Ottoman have focused on the translators from Persian into Ottoman Turkish, their motives for undertaking a translation project and their approach to and understanding of the process itself.5 As Gottfried Hagen has demonstrated in his study of Ottoman translations from Persian in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the term ‘translation’ (understood as either ‘word-for-word’ or ‘sense-for-sense’) does not fully capture the nature of the Ottoman texts labelled tercüme. Although in modern Turkish tercüme (and çeviri) denotes ‘translation’, Ottoman tercümans (i.e., those undertaking the tercüme) were not neutral mediators of meaning who disappeared behind the text, which is an understanding of translators’ work now discredited by modern translation scholars as utopian. Rather, they made decisive interventions into the text, not only selectively adding to, omitting from, and occasionally changing the meaning of the srcinal but also often replacing the author’s preface with their own.6 This practice led one scholar to suggest that Ottoman attitudes towards translation were culturally bound. 7 However, were they indeed so unique? Reflecting on practices of translation in early modern Europe, Peter Burke has recently argued that they ‘varied considerably more than general theories suggest. . . . different norms coexisted and competed, so that we may speak of cultures and subcultures of translation’. Furthermore, Renaissance culture was characterized by a remarkably free style of translation that included the liberty to add material, to shift the action of foreign plays and stories to another locale and thus make the translation relevant to the local audience, or even to be so creative that the resulting translations would be more precisely described as ‘tradaptations’.8 Since translations from and into Latin (and Greek) were central to Renaissance learning, translation strategies were hotly debated among humanists.9 The diversity of translation practices is also striking in the Ottoman case, especially in the sixteenth century. As in early modern Europe, most Ottoman translators were not full-time, paid professionals. They were poets, sufi mystics or imperial administrators, often from the emerging scribal, bureaucratic elite, who engaged in translations from Arabic and Persian for a variety of cultural and political agendas that await systematic investigation.10 Many derived their social status from their knowledge of the classical languages of the Islamic tradition, but also from their contribution to the fashioning of Ottoman Turkish as the language of the imperial chancery, prose and poetry. Recent research suggests that, starting early in Süleyman’s reign, Ottoman Turkish supplanted Arabic and Persian as the language of the Ottoman chancery, prompting key bureaucrats such as Celalzade Mustafa to refine a new imperial lan
— Tijana Krstić —
guage, through translation, domestication of Persian and Arabic terms in Ottoman Turkish, and cultural innovation.11 At the same time, the Ottomans began to use only Ottoman Turkish in their diplomatic correspondence, abandoning the practice of granting letters of imperial pledge ( ahdnames) in Italian, Greek or even variants of Old Church Slavonic, depending on the addressee. 12 This imposition of the new linguistic boundaries of imperial identity also demanded a new class of linguistic and cultural mediators. Changes in Ottoman chancery practice were accompanied by the rapid development of divan poetry in Ottoman Turkish. By the mid-sixteenth century the ability to produce verse in Ottoman Turkish, as opposed to Persian, had new become the hallmark of distinction and, often, membership in the ruling class. The Ottoman poetic language entailed an interplay between translation of Persian masters and attempts to innovate and surpass them.13 Similar developments are observable in Ottoman prose writing: in the s Mehmed III instructed court historians to write histories only in Ottoman Turkish, ‘the language of common usage’.14 The process by which Ottoman Turkish became the imperial language also paralleled and enhanced the fashioning of a distinct visual, architectural, legal and religious Ottoman imperial tradition in the second half of the sixteenth century. 15 The Ottoman imperial language did not consist only of new linguistic and stylistic features. It also included new ideological concepts that needed to be heralded to both domestic and international audiences. While bureaucratic and literary elites promoted these concepts on the domestic level, the imperial dragomans (from Arabic tarjuman) conveyed the Ottoman imperial agenda abroad. Their existence as a professional group was the outcome both of the process of bureaucratization inaugurated by Süleyman and of the Ottomans’ increasingly dynamic diplomatic contacts with European polities in the Mediterranean.16 Although the Ottomans had used translators since the fifteenth century, it is only in Süleyman’s era that a diplomatic corps – albeit selected in an ad hoc manner – with a discernible hierarchy begins to emerge, subject to the office of the chief secretary (reisülküttab). While sixteenth-century imperial dragomans, all of whom were converts to Islam with non-Turkish-speaking backgrounds, generally never attained the literary sophistication in Ottoman Turkish of their contemporaries from the scribal class, they were nonetheless acutely aware of the importance of language and translation in projecting the legitimacy of Ottoman imperial and religious authority. Moreover, by drawing on their own cultural and linguistic backgrounds, through their written works they also brought into the Ottoman empire European humanist attitudes towards texts and translations, as well as Renaissance discourses of legitimacy. What follows is a closer look at the career and writings of three sixteenthcentury imperial interpreters, who are well known for their diplomatic roles but less so for their literary production and their understanding of the translation process. YU NU S BE Y
Yunus Bey (d. ) began his work as an Ottoman envoy in – as a young cavalryman. In he became chief dragoman ( baş tercüman), in which capacity he served at least until .17 Originally a Venetian subject from the Peloponnese port town of Modon, the son of a certain Zorzi Taroniti, Yunus Bey was captured by Ottomans as a young man around and subsequently converted to Islam. During his
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career, which is well documented in both Ottoman and western sources, he undertook numerous diplomatic missions to European polities, although he is best known for his six missions to Venice. He spoke Italian and Greek fluently and was also proficient in Latin. In , before the outbreak of the Ottoman–Venetian war, Yunus Bey carried to Venice the request for an alliance with the Ottomans and French against Charles V. On this occasion the Venetians published a short pamphlet summarizing his oration in Italian before the Signoria as well as the Senate’s response, probably to inform Europe of their intentions.18 However, in the same year, they also published a pamphlet in Italian co-authored by Yunus Bey andhad Alvise (d. ), the illegitimate son supposedly of the Venetian doge Andrea Gritti, who had Gritti an influential career 19 in Süleyman’s service. This pamphlet detailed the organization and administration of the sultan’s domains, his palace, and his armies in the battlefield. Particularly striking is the long list of administrative offices given in Ottoman Turkish, along with an explanation of what the holders of these positions did and what stipend they received. In addition to mapping out the administrative structure of the sultan’s palace and his impressively vast domains, the goal of this work seemed to be to introduce the Ottomans on their own terms and in their own language. Audiences in Italy, especially in diplomatic circles, must have already been used to the names and titles of the principal Ottoman administrators, such as vezir, bassa, defterdar or beglerbei, which were frequent in diplomatic correspondence from Istanbul. However, the pamphlet also introduced less commonly known Ottoman functionaries, such as the bustagibassi (in Ottoman Turkish, bostancıbaşı, head of the imperial guards), vechilargibassi (vekilharcıbaşı, palace steward), asgibassi ( aşcıbaşı, head cook), capigilar ( kapıcılar, gate keepers), etc. By insisting on this new vocabulary in Ottoman Turkish, the pamphlet encouraged the Venetian and other audiences to learn it or ignore it at their own risk. This pamphlet is also unique because it is the first work by an Ottoman author (or authors) explicitly intended for readership in Western Europe. Since the invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century, one of the most frequent topics in printed religious and secular literature was the rise of ‘the Turk’. Yunus Bey contributed to this Renaissance trend with a piece of Turcica literature that, unlike the rest, presented a positive image of the Ottoman empire. During his six visits to Venice, he not only explored the city and its culture but also made friendships with Venetian dignitaries, one of whom, Giovanni Francesco Mocenigo, even hosted Yunus Bey in his house.20 His exposure to Renaissance culture was not, however, limited to Venice: contemporary Istanbul, the Mediterranean hub bustling with merchant, diplomatic and cultural activity, was also developing into a Renaissance imperial city interested in its own classical imperial past.21 Although we knowtogether little about the translation process, this pamphlet, withYunus detailsBey’s fromunderstanding his biography,ofsuggests that he used his status as a cultural intermediary to promote the cause of the Ottoman empire and Islam among the Ottomans’ rivals. The pamphlet’s overall message of the empire’s strength, majesty and ability to attract and incorporate non-Muslims is reinforced in the authors’ signature at the end of the work: the readers learn that Yunus Bey, ‘who was Greek and now is Turk & the great interpreter of the Signor & Signor Aluise Gritti, son of the Doge of Venice’, vouch that everything written is true.22 Yunus Bey died in as a pious Muslim, having commissioned a mosque by the imperial
— Tijana Krstić —
architect Sinan. This was completed after his death thanks to funds given him for this particular purpose, in return for help with negotiations in Istanbul, by the Archduke of Austria, Ferdinand I of Habsburg (Holy Roman Emperor –).23 MAHMUD BEY
Another Ottoman imperial interpreter whose interest in translation went beyond diplomacy was Mahmud Bey (d. ). Born Sebold, the son of Jakob von Pibrach, a shopkeeper from Vienna,24 he was serving as a page of the Hungarian king Lajos II 25
when he wasin captured thenative Ottomans in the ofs Mohács . anHeimpehad good Latin addition by to his German, andbattle by the hadinbecome rial interpreter. He participated in important diplomatic missions to Transylvania, Poland, France, Venice and Prague, and between and his death in was chief dragoman.26 Mahmud is today recognized as the author of a work surviving in a single undated manuscript, entitled Tarih-i Ungurus (History of Hungary).27 Although first published in , this work has been studied mostly by Hungarian linguists and has been largely ignored by historians of the Ottoman empire. It is nevertheless a fascinating source for study of an Ottoman translator’s practices in the Renaissance era. It reveals the outlook of a man deeply integrated into the Ottoman imperial enterprise and informed by contemporary Ottoman diplomatic and ideological issues, as well as by the Renaissance culture of translation. In the introduction to this history, Mahmud says: When several among the fortresses in the region of Hungary that the sultan had conquered with the strike of his sword chose to obey the king of Vienna and ignore the padişah’s command, he came upon them with an enormous army and subjected them with a single strike. In a fortress named Ustulni Belgırad [Székesfehérvár] a book in Latin was found, and upon inspection it was established that it was a history of Hungary from the olden days telling how that region was ruled, why it was called Hungary and why its capital Buda was called Buda and what the names of the old capitals were, and what kings came and went, when and whom they fought, how long they lived and ruled. For this reason I, the humble Dragoman Mahmud, decided to translate (tercüme) it. Perhaps the time will come when the sultan of this time and the world-conqueror of this era will bestow his exalted look upon this poor one’s gift and endow his slave with favor and mercy.28 What the reader expects is a history of Hungary, but that is not exactly what follows. Instead, ues into after the story a short of Alexander expositionthe on Great, the ancestors which explains of the Hungarians, why the work Mahmud is subtitled segIskendername (Epic of Alexander). Although Alexander the Great was the subject of many medieval romances in a variety of languages in both Europe and the Muslim world, in the Renaissance era the Alexander epic experienced an unprecedented global boom in popularity, from the British Isles to Indonesia.29 Besides being an epic warrior, Alexander embodied the notion of a universal world emperor revived by Renaissance politics and looming large in the mind of many a ruler in the early sixteenth century. To early Ottomans,
— Of translation and empire —
Alexander’s exploits were known through Firdawsi’s Persian epic the Şahname and Nizami’s Sikandarnama, as well as through the earliest surviving Ottoman historical work, Ahmedi’s Iskendername (c.). It is well known that Mehmed the Conqueror saw himself in the image of Alexander and that his palace library owned the standard biography of Alexander, Arrian’s Anabasis, copied for the sultan’s collection in the s. In fact, comparison of the Conqueror with Alexander the Great was the leitmotif of Kritoboulos’s History of Mehmed the Conqueror, composed in Greek for the sultan at about the same time.30 In the early sixteenth century the figure of Alexander/ Iskender, or Dhul-Qarnayn (‘the two-horned one’), acquired further connotations in the Ottoman In addition to being world conqueror, he was a messianic figure, and withcontext. the beginning of the tenth acentury of the Islamic calendar ( / ) messianic hopes began to centre upon the Ottoman sultan, especially Süleyman, who consciously promoted this image of himself.31 Furthermore, in the early sixteenth century Alexander’s exploits against the Persians acquired new meaning in the Ottoman context with the rise of the Safavid threat. What was Mahmud Bey’s source on Alexander the Great and why bring him into an Ottoman account of Hungarian history? The Hungarian classicist István Borzsák has identified Mahmud’s key source as Marcus Iunianus Iustinus’s abstract of the Historiae Philippicae by Pompeius Trogus.32 While staying close to this source, Mahmud also provides important cultural glosses, such as referring to Darius as Darab Shah, a name that would be more familiar to the readers of the Şahname. He further embellishes the rhetoric of Iskender’s letters to Darab Shah, mentioned in both the Şahnama and Iustinus’ history, in which Iskender proclaims himself the universal ruler of his era (sahib-kıran-ı zaman), the ruler of the seven climes (padişah-ı heft iklim) and the ruler of the Rum (Rum padişahı), all titles which Süleyman also claimed for himself. 33 Sixteenth-century historians and diplomats were well aware of the exchange of letters between Süleyman and the Safavid shah Tahmasp preceding and following the Treaty of Amasya in . In his Tabakatü’l-memalik ve derecatü’l-mesalik, Celalzade Mustafa cites these letters in full. In one letter Tahmasp pays homage to Süleyman as a world conqueror in the mould of the legendary Persian rulers Darius, Cemşid and Feridun, but most of all as an Alexander the Great of his time. 34 Extant analyses of Mahmud Bey’s history of Hungary tend to overlook the prominent underlying theme of Alexander’s enmity with Darius and the constant shifting of the geographic emphasis in the work from the border with the Persians to Alexander’s fictive conquests in Europe. This perspective not only captures well the Ottoman predicament of constantly having to monitor borders in both east and west but also suggests that the text was written in the mid-s, during or after Süleyman’s campaign against Tahmasp. The rest of the Tarih-i Ungurus, about two-thirds of the text, blends in the story of Alexander’s conquests with to thethe establishment and its topsy-turvy royal history. Mahmud’s reference translation of ofHungary an old medieval source in Latin becomes relevant here, as he evidently uses at least one medieval Hungarian chronicle – and probably several – such as the fourteenth-century Chronicon pictum or Thuróczy János’s fifteenth-century Chronica Hungarorum.35 In this context the mission of the work comes to the fore: Mahmud represents Hungary as the conquest symbolic of world domination and a necessary stepping stone towards the conquest of Vienna, which he characterizes as kızıl elma (‘the golden apple’), the last Ottoman conquest in Christian lands before the End of Days. In bringing together the history of Hungary
— Tijana Krstić —
with the history of Alexander, Mahmud Bey produces the ultimate blueprint of the Ottoman imperial agenda. He represents the conquest of Pannonia, where Hungary was to be established, as of equal importance for Alexander the Great’s plan to rule the world as his conquest of Persia. This proposition was by no means foreign to the contemporary Ottoman ruling elite. Since the fifteenth century, the conquest of Hungary had been a highly coveted prize for the Ottoman sultans and was described as such in contemporary chronicles.36 Both after Süleyman conquered Buda in and after he established direct rule in central Hungary in the early s, the conquest was described by Ottoman historians as one of Alexandrine proportions.37 Through his workpolities; as an imperial dragoman, Bey conveyed the Ottoman agenda to European as an author he alsoMahmud brought European Renaissance sensibilities to the Ottoman empire, synthesizing them with Hungarian history and Islamic traditions. By weaving together the classical themes appropriated by both Ottomans and Hungarians, he produced a work that views Süleyman’s conquest not only as the culmination of Hungarian history but as the point of convergence of imperial ideas, past and present. It is unlikely that this work ever reached Süleyman or achieved any significant circulation. Its style and composition leave much to be desired compared with contemporary Ottoman histories. Nevertheless, Tarih-i Ungurus is a fascinating example of one Ottoman’s understanding of translation and its relationship to imperial legitimacy. MURAD BEY
Among sixteenth-century dragomans, Murad Bey (d. late s) was the most prolific writer of independent works of poetry and prose. In his own testimony, Murad was captured at the battle of Mohács in when he was seventeen years old. Originally named Balázs Somlyai, he hailed from Nagybánya (today Baia Mare in northern Transylvania, Romania).38 According to Stefan Gerlach, Lutheran chaplain to the Habsburg envoy to Constantinople from to , who befriended him while he was a dragoman to the embassy, Murad had once studied in Vienna. He became an imperial interpreter around under the patronage of the grand vezir Rüstem Paşa, having already taken part in a diplomatic mission, probably together with Mahmud Bey, to Transylvania, where he was captured and spent thirty months in captivity. Murad later wrote that this episode prompted him to write several of his polemical works and to reflect on the importance of translation for religious polemics. The sources suggest that, in addition to Ottoman Turkish, Murad knew Hungarian, Latin and probably German, although it is difficult to assesses his facility with Arabic and Persian. In his long career, from the mid-s to the mid-s, Murad produced several for one’s towards God (Kitab tesviyetü’tfascinating wrote a polemical works treatise which entitled he then Guide translated intoturning different languages. In –, he teveccüh ila’l hak), in which he argued for Islam’s superiority over previous revelations. In he translated Cicero’s De senectute into Ottoman Turkish; between and he translated his earlier religious treatise into Latin; and between and he composed in Ottoman Turkish a number of religious hymns on the unity of God, with parallel translations in Hungarian and Latin. Finally, as an elderly man dismissed from imperial service as a result of his ‘immoderate enjoyment of wine’, Murad met Philip Haniwald from Eckersdorf, and in return for a small fee translated into Latin an
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Ottoman source (or sources), among which was Mehmed Neşri’s Ottoman chronicle. This translation became central to the Codex Hanivaldanus.39 As with the works of Yunus Bey and Mahmud Bey, Murad Bey’s opus has been known to scholars for almost a century, but has been considered mostly by linguists and literary scholars. I have discussed elsewhere Murad’s religious treatise and the narrative of his own conversion appended to it, which represents the earliest known Ottoman self-narrative of conversion to Islam. 40 This and other Ottoman conversion narratives composed by former Christians familiar with religious debates in postReformation Christendom represented more than cultural translation of a Christian genre an Islamic context. Rather, they were of OttomanInparticipation in thetoreligio-political developments of the ageanofexpression confessionalization. this treatise Murad also makes intriguing observations about the process of translation, echoing the debates regarding the translation of the scriptures and classical works into vernaculars then raging among humanists in late Renaissance Europe. In his introduction Murad declares the argument of Jews and Christians, that they should adhere to their ancestral faith because their books came down from God before the Koran, to be invalid, because it is possible that their ancestors corrupted and altered (tag.yir) the scriptures through endless translation from one language to another (dürlü dürlü dillere döndermiş).41 Although this argument draws on well-established antiChristian and anti-Jewish polemics, Murad introduces a personal note. When this poor one engaged in a religious dispute with some learned Christian men in the Infidels’ Land [Kafiristan] and discussed the fact that these books were like that [i.e., altered through translation], the book of Psalms was before us, in both Latin and Hungarian, which was translated from Latin. Suddenly, I spotted a place in the text where instead of one word another one was chosen that considerably changed the meaning of the passage. Since I knew what word should come in that place I said: ‘Should not the meaning of this be this?’ at which point [they were] struck dumb and could not respond.42 In addition to criticizing the translation of Christian and Jewish scriptures, Murad is critical about the attempts of some Christians to translate the Koran upon learning a few words of Arabic, giving rise to a work full of omissions and blasphemies.43 He concludes that none of this is surprising, since ‘for every word in one language there are many synonyms (ma‘ani-yi müştereke) so that to understand it when it is translated into the final language, one cannot help but infer a different meaning’.44 Hence one must read the scriptures in the language in which they came to mankind. He implies that the Koran’s untranslatability is the foundation of Islam’s superiority and, by exten45
sion, ofthat, the in Ottomans’ supreme religio-political authority over their Murad argues addition to corrupting the scriptures, the Christian popesrivals. and cardinals became morally corrupt, which caused them to lose the keys to heaven srcinally given by Jesus to Peter. With the arrival of Muhammad, these keys were transferred to the Muslim community and eventually came down to the Ottoman sultan, the caliph of all Muslims and the messianic world conqueror.46 However, while criticizing the translation of scripture, Murad is acutely aware, as a professional interpreter, of the importance of translation for communication of his own religious and political message. Although self-effacing about his knowledge of
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both Turkish and Latin, he writes that he decided to translate ( tercüme) his treatise into Latin so that the Christians of Hungary, Germany, Poland, Czechia, France, Portugal and Spain could learn of Islam’s potential and become ‘softened’ to its message.47 The resulting work is a fascinating bilingual treatise, with the main Ottoman Turkish text surrounded by the Latin translation in the margins. A similar effect is also produced by his hymns, presented in page-by-page parallel Hungarian, Latin and Ottoman versions.48 Both the hymns and the treatise reveal a man willing to explore his Christian past through his Muslim present: in the treatise he integrates reformed Christian sensibilities with a distinct sufi outlook, while in the hymns he seems close to espousing Unitarianism, proximity to Islam did not his Christian contemporaries. He may havewhose translated the hymns into Latin andescape Hungarian in order to make Islam more familiar to audiences in Transylvania, where Unitarianism was becoming one of the state religions in the later sixteenth century. Murad’s attitude towards linguistic and cultural mediation and his attempts to make the Ottomans an integral part of a broader Renaissance culture appear also in his In praise of old age (Kitab der medh-i piri), a translation or paraphrase in Ottoman Turkish of Cicero’s De senectute, commissioned by the Venetian bailo Marino di Cavalli as a present for Süleyman. 49 Murad’s introduction describes the work as a translation of a text in Firenk dili (literally, ‘the language of the Franks’ – here Italian) which di Cavalli had inherited from his late maternal grandfather, Andrea Foscolo. It records a conversation which supposedly took place in Edirne between Murad II (–) and his son, later Mehmed II, about the conditions and merits of old age. The text shows a doting and respectful son who hopes to succeed his father not only as a ruler but as a prudent man as well, a potentially painful and risky topic to bring up with an aging Süleyman, who not only had one of his sons (Mustafa) executed in but faced the treason of another (Bayezid), who fled to Iran in and was shortly afterwards also executed. According to Marino di Cavalli’s introduction to the text as translated by Murad, after his appointment as bailo in Byzantine Constantinople, Andrea Foscolo visited Murad II in Edirne, where he was hosted with great honour. Marino di Cavalli does not say explicitly whether Andrea Foscolo himself recorded this dialogue, but states that: ‘upon finding this [he, di Cavalli] did not see it fit that this beautiful gem should remain concealed, and [he] wanted to have it translated again from Firenk dili into Turkish’. Di Cavalli also ‘deemed it proper that the symbols and precious sayings demonstrating the eminent perceptiveness of the glorious ancestors of the felicitous padişah of the world from the House of Osman should become the inheritance of the felicitous padişah’. Furthermore, he finds the text important because]itwho makes it known to did the not entire world thatonly those [of the came and went attain fame by glorious bravery, ancestors sword, strength, padişah might, majesty and justice but rather also by learning, refinement, fairness, excellence and prudence.
Finally, Marino di Cavalli declares his intention of having the text translated and published in Latin, in order to make it available to different Christian communities not only in the land of the Franks ( Firengistan) but also in ‘Germany, Poland, Czechia, and Hungary’.50
— Of translation and empire —
The following dialogue is indeed modelled upon Cicero’s De senectute. In both texts, the conversation begins with the younger man admiring the older one’s vitality and presence of mind, asking about the secrets of a long and prosperous life and the merits of old age. Although the text again draws directly on De senectute in the last section, which explains why people dislike old age, the entire middle section, in which Murad II reflects on why old age is better than infancy ( ‘alem-i tufuliyyet), up to the age of nine, adolescence (‘alem-i sabavet), from nine to fifteen, youth ( mertebe-yi şebabet), from fifteen to thirty, and mature age (‘alem-i ruculiyyet), from thirty to forty-five, is not from Cicero. glance, this appears to be of onea play of those free translations, common in At thefirst Renaissance, thatwork relocate the action to another place and introduce local actors with whom the translator’s audience can easily identify. Murad II and Mehmed II, and others mentioned in the text, such as Evrenos Bey, Bayezid I, Alexander/Iskender and Anuşirvan, are key to that effect. However, cultural translation goes well beyond mere substitution of names. On at least two occasions Murad II illustrates his point through stories attributed to Lokman, the Koranic paragon of wisdom. There are also references to the Koran and God throughout the text, as well as to the need to submit to one’s destiny. As in Kitab tesviyetü’t-teveccüh, Murad Bey finds an easy affinity between the stoic and sufi approaches to life and ethics. The text espouses the effort to decrease worldly attachments, limit the appetite for food or sex, and bring dissident elements into harmony. Sufi pietism and stoics shared the view that the ego can be one’s worst enemy if not properly checked, a theme which pervades much of what Murad II tells his son and gives the dialogue a sufi veneer. What exactly was Murad Bey’s function in producing this text? Although the introduction refers to an srcinal text which he ‘translated’, the story about Andrea Foscolo’s manuscript was possibly designed to elevate di Cavalli’s position by creating a venerable historical bond between his and the sultan’s ancestors. Such fictional introductions and references to ancient texts newly discovered at secret or unexpected locations were commonplace in the early modern period. 51 Moreover, none of Murad’s contemporaries indicate that he knew Italian. Instead, it is possible that he was presented with Cicero’s dialogue in Latin and asked to produce an appropriate Ottoman version of it. The work would then parallel the Renaissance imitatio, namely the attempt to write Latin poetry and prose using the language, style and topics of classical Roman models, of which Cicero was the most illustrious. Commenting on the spirited debate regarding the issues of translatio and imitatio, and the question of how ‘slavishly’ one should imitate Roman models, Erasmus approved of imitation, ‘not the kind drawn from one model from whose lines it will not dare to depart’, but rather the kind that takes the best from the writings of several authors and results in a work that does not appear to 52
be ‘a mosaic of Cicero,the butpolemical the child treatise, born of it[one’s] brain’. In that lightKitab of Murad Bey’s other work, especially is quite possible der medh-i piri was the ‘child of his brain’. CONCLUSION
Few copies of the works by Ottoman imperial interpreters discussed above are extant today, suggesting that their circulation and audience was limited. While the impact of their work on Ottoman audiences may have been minimal or non-existent, they
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were somewhat more successful in engaging a foreign readership, especially the diplomatic and scholarly community. Yunus Bey’s pamphlet went through two editions in Venice, and both Murad’s and Mahmud’s works are found today in libraries outside Istanbul, purchased by foreign diplomats and travellers for collections in Vienna, London and Budapest. Sixteenth-century sources show that all three men interacted with contemporary humanists from Padua, Venice, Heidelberg and other academic circles who hoped to recover classical texts during their sojourn in Ottoman Istanbul, a city they often viewed as an overlay on Roman and Byzantine Constantinople containing hidden treasures relating to classical and early Christian history. In other words, the cultural and linguistic in which interpreters engaged wasinternational not limited to their diplomatic andmediation written work; theythese also participated in a larger network of diplomats, travellers, merchants and scholars who converged on Istanbul and exchanged information, texts and objects which were crucial in shaping the discourse on the Ottomans abroad and on the rise of Oriental studies in Europe. Yunus Bey, Mahmud Bey and Murad Bey wrote when the Ottoman imperial image was being crafted. Their works are period pieces of Süleyman’s era and its experimentation with non-Muslim modes of legitimization in creating the sultan’s image as a universal sovereign.53 The openness to non-Muslim elements in imperial discourse, in which all three interpreters participated, subsided towards the end of Süleyman’s reign and in its aftermath, as sultans began to fashion themselves more as Sunni caliphs, universal rulers of the Islamic community. Although the exchange of religious, literary and scientific knowledge with the west through translation continued throughout the seventeenth century, there are no similar attempts at seamless synthesis of disparate cultural, historical and religious elements for the glory of the Ottoman sultanate. However, these men were not the only early modern Ottoman go-betweens engaged in cultural translation. Jewish medical doctors from Spain, Greek scholars educated in Padua and Rome, converts to Islam in various branches of Ottoman bureaucracy but also in religious circles, as well as scholars from Arabic- and Persian-speaking Ottoman provinces, all participated in different translation projects within the empire. Some of these projects were commissioned by the sultan; others were backed privately, by men of science and scholarship or even foreign missionaries. In the early s, the Ottoman polymath Katip Çelebi engaged a French convert to Islam-turned sufişeyh to translate the Atlas minor from Latin into Ottoman Turkish.54 In the early s, Isaac Besire, the Anglo-Catholic chaplain of the English community in Istanbul, and the Dutch scholar Levinus Warner commissioned Ali Ufki Bey, who later became Ottoman chief dragoman, to translate, respectively, the Anglican catechism and the Bible with the Apocrypha into Ottoman Turkish.55 A closer study of the specific international social networks that converged in Istanbul and the contexts which produced various types of translation promises to reveal previously obscured intellectual exchange that both bridged and helped produce the notion of channels differenceofbetween ‘East’ and ‘West’. NOTES
Casale ; MacLean ; Andrews and Kalpaklı ; Necipoğlu ; Krstić . E.g., Bennassar and Bennassar ; García-Arenal and Wiegers ; Dursteler ; Davis ; Rothman . Pym ; Rothman .
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The absence of studies on translation before the extensive literary translations from Western European languages in the late Ottoman era can be credited to the ideology and methodology of early Republican Turkish scholars, who tended to study pre-Ottoman and Ottoman Turkish in terms of ‘contamination’ by Persian and Arabic influences. The Ottoman Turkish of divan poets was deemed an artificial construct that detracted from the ‘pure Turkish’ of folk poets such as Yunus Emre (see Paker : ). Pistor-Hatam ; Toska ; Hagen . Hagen : , . Paker : . Burke : –; Burke .
Pym : Hagen ; –. Fleischer b; Woodhead ; Fleischer a: . Yılmaz : –. Ibid.: –. Kim : –; Andrews : . Woodhead : ; Fleischer a: –. Producing a new, imperial literary language was not an enterprise unique to the Ottomans. In contemporary Spain, Castilian became the imperial language (Pym : ). Necipoğlu . Veinstein . Matuz : –; Bacqué-Grammont . Pedani b: . The pamphlet was published in Lybyer [] : –. Pedani b: . For the efforts of Süleyman and his grand vezir Ibrahim Paşa to incorporate the Hippodrome, the old ceremonial core of Byzantine Constantinople, into Ottoman imperial ritual, see Turan : I, –. Lybyer [] :: . ; Necipoğlu : . Bacqué-Grammont Petritsch : ; Ács : –. Ács : –. Matuz : –. The manuscript is in the Oriental manuscript collection at the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. For a transliteration and facsimile in Ottoman Turkish, see Hazai –; for a translation into Hungarian with a critical introduction, see Hazai . Hazai –: I, . Ng . Raby : –. Fleischer : –. Borzsák : –; Hazai : –. Hazai –: I, ; on Rum, see Kafadar . Kappert : b–a. Hazai : –. Fodor b: ; Turan : –. Fodor b: Ács : ;. Babinger ; Matuz : –. Ménage : –. Krstić . Murad b. Abdullah, Kitāb tesviyetü’t-teveccüh ilā’l-hak, British Library, Add. MS , b. Ibid., a. Ibid., b–a. Ibid., b: Ve bir dilde olan lafzda nice ma‘āni-yi müştereke anlansa āhır dile dönderildükde bir ma‘ānadan g. ayrıya istidlālına çāre yokdur.
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According to Islamic tradition, since God’s words, as recorded in the Koran, were revealed to Muhammad in Arabic, the Koran cannot be translated into another language without altering God’s words. Murad b. Abdullah, Kitāb tesviyetü’t-teveccüh ilā’l-hak, British Library, Add. MS , a–b. Ibid., b. Babinger : –, for a facsimile of Murad’s hymns, and –, for transcription of the Ottoman text. Ettore Rossi published a short study on this unique manuscript together with a critical edition of the text in Ottoman Turkish and its translation into Italian (: –). The srcinal
Rossi manuscript : –. is in the Nurosmaniye Library, Istanbul. Wiegers . Endres : . Necipoğlu . Günergun : . Neudecker .
CHAPTER TEN
OTTOMAN LANGUAGES
*
Christine Woodhead
T
he Ottoman Turkish language was a product of empire, a consciously developed political and cultural tool. By around formal, written Ottoman had evolved from its base in the colloquial Turkish of Anatolia into a prestige language dominated by elements from Persian, the inherited language of early administration and literature, and from Arabic, the first language of religion and scholarship. This amalgam was considered a natural and appropriate reflection of Ottoman imperial status in relation to the Islamic cultural heritage, appearing in varying degrees of complexity in both chancery documents and literary works. By the nineteenth century, however, there was increasing criticism, particularly among reformers in Istanbul, of this official language as an unnecessarily complex and artificial hybrid, understandable only with constant reference to dictionaries. Ottoman Turkish appeared to many as symbolic of an inward-looking, complacent conservatism responsible for late Ottoman decline, and as a barrier to political and social reform. In the post-imperial, nationalist era of the s and s, this language was, by definition, redolent of a failed political entity and had few supporters. Official use of ‘Ottoman Turkish’ came to an abrupt end in November , when the Republic of Turkey adopted a specially devised alphabet in Latin characters to replace the Arabic script in which Turkish had been written for almost a millennium. Atatürk’s language reform movement then proceeded to purge from the written language most ‘foreign’ Arabic and Persian elements, aiming to produce a vocabulary and grammar as purely Turkish as possible. By the mid-twentieth century, less than fifty years after the end of the empire, Ottoman had become effectively a dead language, its literary and historical works rendered largely inaccessible and alien to subsequent generations of Turkish speakers. So rapidly did thedefinitive political cultural outlook change that even the language of Nutuk , Atatürk’s address to the Turkish Grand National Assembly given over five days in October , soon had to be simplified and modernized for most readers. Why Ottoman Turkish assumed the form it did in the earlier period, in what ways and how widely it was used, and to what extent its use promoted or prevented the spread of a specifically Ottoman literary culture are some of the questions to be raised in this essay. There will necessarily be more questions than answers. The definitive
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break between Ottoman and modern Turkish, and negative views of the later historical language and its written output, long discouraged serious study of it and exacerbated the historian’s usual problem of acquiring appropriate ‘cultural literacy’.1 The tendency still lingers to consider Ottoman implicitly as an artificial idiom in contrast to ‘ordinary’ Turkish, a view subconsciously reinforced for most western scholars by the usual practice of learning modern Turkish first and then moving backwards into an Ottoman language which initially appears to be more akin to Arabic and Persian than to Turkish. Among the points to be raised below is the potential insight to be gained by a different approach, that of comparing the style and use of Ottoman not with Turkish modern world.– modern or otherwise – but with other prestige languages in the early Among many other factors rendering the study of Ottoman language and literary culture difficult is the mere range and intimidating number of manuscripts and documents which survive from at least the period after , the majority of which remain unstudied. This is despite the efforts of Turkish scholars over the past half century, particularly in producing critical editions of the divans (anthologies) of individual poets.2 Equally, over the past twenty years Mehmet İpşirli and other students of Bekir Kütükoğlu in Istanbul have led the way in producing reliable editions of major sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman histories.3 Nevertheless, much groundwork remains to be done. One particular problem is that, in some historiography, chancery documentation and other types of prose writing, the Ottoman Turkish language can indeed be a barrier to understanding, particularly in its more elevated registers. Sweeping judgements about tired idioms, overblown rhetorical prose and meaningless verbiage are easy to make, and sometimes justified. Not all writers wrote well; bureaucratic language often was jargon. For non-Turkish scholars there have also been other discouragements. From the fifteenth century onwards, constant hostile references in western literature to ‘the Turk’ imposing an alien and barbaric culture upon Christian peoples established a lurking, unappealing stereotype. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century western Orientalists studied principally Arabic and Persian languages and literatures, while philologists classified Turkish as a Ural-Altaic language not native to the Middle East and, by implication, of less significance. In the trio of major Islamic civilizations, Ottoman came a poor third, a balance still reflected today in most departments of Middle or Near Eastern studies in western universities. Added to this bias is the fact that, for political, nationalist reasons, much twentieth-century historical writing in the empire’s Arab and Balkan successor states inevitably took an anti-Ottoman stance.4 Assessing the role played by the Ottoman Turkish language and written culture in the empire as a whole is therefore not easy, and few attempts have been made to do so. was the Yet, if language balancewas between a tool practical of empire,communication how successfully and didawe-inspiring it function aspropaganda? such? What Was the latter dominant, and were the Ottomans seen as ‘other’ because of their mode of expression? It is easy to assume that this was so. Yet, the modern desire for straightforward clarity in government communications was not necessarily matched in the pre-modern era in any culture, particularly in public announcements of military victory or of monarchical largesse, which required an appropriately grand tone. In return, for writers seeking court patronage, striking metaphors and inspiring allusions were usually more effective than unadorned prose. Andreas Tietze’s studies of works
— Ottoman languages —
by the sixteenth-century historian Mustafa Ali (d. ) offer the best guide to the consciously artistic Ottoman Turkish prose style known as inşa (literally, ‘creating, construction’), with its parallel, rhymed and sonorous phrasing.5 Yet, not all Ottoman Turkish prose was deliberately complex or rhetorical; the extreme has perhaps too often been taken as the norm. Major histories such as those by Selaniki (d. ) or Hasan Beyzade (d. c.) were composed in an educated but relatively clear register of written Ottoman, and were not court-centred commissions. Koçi Bey (d. after ) and other seventeenth-century writers of advice literature generally chose clarity over style, even when addressing the sultan. As will be shown below, other writers naturally their style toofsuit readership purpose. Equally,adjusted while composition thetheir mostintended demanding forms ofand written Ottoman prose was necessarily limited to very learned stylists and highly trained chancery officials – the literary and bureaucratic elites – it is worth considering how far down and across the social and educational scales such texts and documents might have been read or heard, and thereby in varying degrees understood. Ability to compose in a learned and elegant style is one thing; ability to appreciate it is another, and casts the net much wider. If modern historians working in a cultural vacuum can attempt to master complex Ottoman, a significant proportion of literate Ottoman subjects – native speakers of Turkish or otherwise – could surely have done so too, if inclined, and mostly with much greater success. Indeed, while western sovereigns might have been impressed by the imagery, cadences and self-confidence of the Latin or Italian translations of Ottoman imperial letters, the true force and message of the Ottoman language would have been even more apparent within the empire, among those who could read, half-read or hear the srcinals for themselves. Such domestic recipients included Ottoman vassals such as the khans of the Crimea and the voyvodes of Wallachia and Moldavia, provincial governors and high-ranking judges throughout the empire, and leading scholars and intellectuals to whom the sultans sent gifts and letters of appointment. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particular significance would also have been attached to imperial correspondence with the Ottomans’ perceived rivals in eastern Anatolia and Iraq, the Safavid shahs of Iran. Not only the Ottoman literary language, but also miniature painting and other arts of the book were thoroughly permeated by Persian influences. Both craftsmen and artefacts were among the war booty taken from Tabriz by Selim I in and again by Süleyman in , resulting in several decades of intense cultural oneupmanship on the Ottoman part and culminating in the monumental illuminated manuscripts produced by court painters and litterateurs under Murad III (–). An imperial language which incorporated dominant elements of both Arabic and Persian and, by implication, of crucial aspects of these classical Islamic traditions carried a clear stamp of political authority and made a cultural statement recognizable bothbeen within and outside the empire. Without such elements, how seriously would it have taken? However, until the nineteenth century, Ottomans referred to their sophisticated written language simply as ‘Turkish’, which implies that they did not perceive unbridgeable gaps between higher and lower language registers, either spoken or written.6 Strictly speaking, it is inaccurate to call the pre- language ‘Ottoman Turkish’, although the term remains in use, partly out of habit and partly because it is more specific in its chronological and political referent than the alternative ‘old Turkish’. Its use is also valid linguistically in discriminating between the imperial language and
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those of the millions of other Turkish speakers over the centuries in Azerbayjan, Iran and Central Asia. Most studies of what we will continue to call Ottoman Turkish have naturally focused on its written forms, in particular its literary and chancery use.7 However, it is worth considering briefly the properties and broader usage of the language itself. For instance, while it may be impossible to know to what extent the cadences and lexicon of learned Ottoman were reflected even in educated speech, such an addictive feature as the Persian izafet (‘joining’) construction must have been difficult to resist and relatively easy to use, particularly for the many Ottoman Muslims who had studied Persian Izafet constructions as a separate language. a word orderrules. almostDid completely opposite to that of Turkish, but had muchproduced simpler grammatical this also make ‘Ottoman Turkish’ easier for, say, Greek and Serbian speakers to understand than ordinary Turkish? The ever-increasing use of Arabic words must certainly have appealed, no doubt partly intentionally, to the empire’s Arabic speakers. Hence, one consequence of fostering what to some Turks appeared to be an increasingly foreign ‘Ottoman’ language might have been to make it more accessible, one way or another, to non-Turkish speakers than ordinary Turkish, and therefore more of an asset than a liability in terms of imperial communication. This essay considers firstly the diversity of vernacular language use within the empire, in order to assess the value of spoken Turkish as a medium of communication and hence as a factor contributing to imperial cohesion, rather than militating against it. The assumption here is that (Ottoman) Turkish was a language not only of the cultural and political elite, and that appreciation of its products was not necessarily confined to a narrow, closed circle. Rather, it should be seen as a practical and flexible language working in differing registers, spoken and written, to suit the purpose and the occasion. In view of the once tenacious stereotype of Ottoman rule as an alien imposition in many non-Turkish parts of the empire, it is worth emphasizing the obvious – that in the pre-modern era language was not considered the divisive marker of identity and difference that it is today, that Turkish was relatively widely used, and that Turkish-speaking officials were not necessarily ‘foreign’. Secondly, this essay considers the nature of the ‘Ottoman’ language and its literary culture, not as an unusual, artificial hybrid but as an imperial idiom comparable to others, particularly in the Turkish Muslim world. The focus in what follows is on the period up to , before the combined challenge of print culture, nationalism and conscious modernization. As with the study of many other aspects of Ottoman history, when seen in comparative perspective, linguistic and literary developments turn out not to be unique to the Ottoman case but to derive from the essential nature of an extensive, polyglot and multicultural empire.8 While ‘Turkish’ will be used here generally for the more infor-
mal spoken and written and ‘Ottoman forOttoman the formalunderstanding registers, this terminology is not clearlanguage, cut and should be takenTurkish’ within the of a single language spectrum, rather than the post-imperial tendency to perceive divisive differentiation between elite and non-elite language. OTTOMAN LANGUAGES
It has been estimated that there were around one hundred languages and dialects spoken within the Ottoman empire, a situation probably comparable relative to size
— Ottoman languages —
to that within the Habsburg and Romanov empires, and reflected to a lesser extent in most western states before .9 Until the nineteenth century, only a handful of ‘Ottoman’ languages – primarily Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Armenian, Hebrew (together with the Judeo-Spanish Ladino) and Church Slavonic – were also written languages. Significantly, all of the latter, except Ottoman Turkish and Ladino, were long-established liturgical and scholarly languages with more or less fixed forms. Within each such language a major variation between written and spoken forms was commonplace, giving rise to a form of diglossia, where the learned language was virtually unintelligible to speakers of its own vernacular. 10 Dialectical variation within aexample spokenhere language could alsofrom be the quite extensive. andtongue mostofstudied is Arabic, which s onwardsThe wasprincipal the mother per11 haps one-third of Ottoman subjects. Turkish was therefore not the only language in the empire, or elsewhere, with a significant degree of internal variation between registers. Nor was the Ottoman government alone in facing communication difficulties across a variety of languages. To what extent the Ottomans positively encouraged the use of Ottoman and Turkish as tools of integration, rather than simply of communication, is unknown, probably not the same everywhere, and probably as complex a subject as their attitude to conversion to Islam, to which language use is obviously related. Native speakers of Turkish were not confined to Anatolia and the empire’s northeastern provinces. In northern Syria and northern Iraq, Turkish was widely spoken due to the migratory presence of Türkmen tribes. In Egypt, a Turkish dialect was a common, if not the first, language in Mamluk military households, becoming a lingua franca for the eighteenth-century, multi-ethnic Mamluk ruling class of Cairo.12 In Algiers, the practice of recruiting new Janissaries from Anatolia helped maintain a working knowledge of Turkish. Speakers of Turkish were found throughout the Balkans, as a result initially of the policy of settling Türkmen and other Turkish-speaking communities along the principal military and commercial routes, and of the founding of new towns, and subsequently of conversion to Islam. 13 The seventeenth-century Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi frequently commented on aspects of language in his Seyahatname, ‘Book of travels’, often including brief word lists of lesser-known languages, such as Abhazian (his mother’s native tongue) and Kurdish.14 While recording that in Ohrid in north-eastern Macedonia, Bulgarian and Greek were the local languages, he also noted that ‘they do speak elegant Turkish, and there are some very urbane and witty gentlemen’.15 In Shköder, in north-eastern Albania, ‘they all speak Albanian, which is like no other tongue’ and is ‘a delightful language’. However, he also noted that the inhabitants were all Muslim, and that the town possessed a significant number of mosques and medreses (theological colleges).16 Any urban centre in which a kadi, sancak beyi and other Ottoman officials were based, and where specifi17 Robert cally Muslim buildings mosques, , tombsoforTurkish. baths were established, would also possess manysuch localasMuslims andmedreses local speakers Elsie’s study of eighteenth-century Albanian aljamiado literature provides further evidence that some inhabitants of these distant provinces had a more than passing acquaintance with the Turkish language and Ottoman culture. Aljamiado literature here constitutes verse written in Albanian in the Arabic script, ‘pervaded with Turkish, Arabic and Persian vocabulary’ and with the conceits and style of Ottoman lyric poetry.18 Almost the reverse of this, and demonstrating another aspect of the complex nature of language use within the empire, is the case of Karamanlı – i.e., Turkish written in the Greek
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Figure . Gazi Hüsrev Bey medrese, Sarajevo, completed c.1537 as part of a major vakıf foun-
dation built by Gazi Hüsrev Bey, Ottoman governor of Bosnia. Photo © Grete Howard.
— Ottoman languages —
alphabet by Turkophone Greek Orthodox Christians in western Anatolia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.19 Although Ottoman judicial, military and administrative officials conducted their business officially in Turkish, there was probably little systematic attempt to impose this language on local communities in the way that early modern European states increasingly promoted the use of one particular language over others for the ideological purpose of ultimate political unity.20 Ottoman communication clearly relied heavily on bilingual intermediaries, drawn both from the subject populations and from among government officials. For example, much recent research has shown how Christians kadi the proceedings and regularly recourse to theinjudicial court of theofOttoman records ofhad which were held Turkish. A study şeriat courts in, seventeenth-century Cyprus shows the appointment of Turkish-speaking local Greek Christians as official interpreters.21 More broadly, if the pace of conversion to Islam in the Balkans continued to increase into the eighteenth century, such that by the census Muslims might constitute anywhere between and per cent of the population of a given area,22 this must also have involved a significant level of language acquisition and more people – men in particular – becoming bilingual to a degree. For all state employees, however, Turkish was a compulsory language of business. The first requirements for devşirme recruits from the Balkans and Anatolia were conversion to Islam and learning Turkish; the same applied to slaves acquired for government service through capture or purchase. However, given that devşirme recruits were usually taken at around twelve years of age or more, the majority probably retained a working knowledge of their srcinal language which could later be used to advantage. 23 Many fifteenth- and sixteenth-century grand vezirs are known to have kept or revived strong links with their families and home regions. Among the more striking examples is that of Mehmed II’s grand vezir Mahmud Paşa Angelović (d. ), srcinally a captive from a Serbian noble family, who in the late s and s negotiated regularly with his brother Michael Angelović, a high-ranking Serbian official, for Serbia’s incorporation into the Ottoman empire.24 Lesser Ottoman kul administrators must also have retained such local links and languages. It is likely, for instance, that the janissary officers and their scribes appointed to carry out devşirme recruitment in the Balkan provinces were allocated to their region of srcin, where they spoke the local language. In the seventeenth century two rival groups emerged in the Ottoman military-administrative establishment – recruits of eastern, Caucasian srcin and those of western, Albanian or Bosnian srcin – each characterized by linguistic and local ties.25 In short, a significant proportion of Ottoman military-administrative officials, particularly those posted to the Balkan provinces in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, must have been effectively bilingual. Thus there was not necessarily a language barrier between
Turkish-speaking officials andTurkish others. was The officially situationthe appears subtlyofdifferent in theand Arab provinces. Although here too language government the political elite, in the predominantly Muslim world it was also just one of several local colloquial languages, all of which were eclipsed in usage and cultural prestige by Arabic. Many urban speakers of Arabic – administrators, merchants, artisans and scholars – who needed to communicate professionally with Ottoman officials or who sought patronage in Istanbul certainly learned Turkish. On the other hand, before the nineteenth century, relatively few native Arabic speakers were appointed to significant posts in the central administration in Istanbul, and nodevşirme and few kul officials appointed from
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Istanbul in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had Arabic as their native tongue or family ties with any areas in Syria, Iraq or Egypt.26 The chief kadis of major cities such as Damascus, Mecca and Cairo were learned Istanbul Ottomansthoroughly competent in scholarly Arabic but who did not necessarily speak a vernacular form; most of their deputies and probably all their court staff, including translators (here, for the ebnefit more of the kadi than the petitioners?), would have been local Arabic ps eakers. Hence the nature and degree of linguistic integration in the Arab provinces differed from that in the Balkan provinces. Although Arabic speakers perhaps had a cultural prestige, they were not drawn into the central government and did not have the samelanguages. potential However, for influence upon Ottoman as didthe speakers of during Greek and Balkan as Ehud Toledano policy has shown, growth the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of ‘Ottoman-local’ elites and their households in Arab towns and cities promoted much stronger social and cultural links between, on the one hand, Janissaries and centrally appointed officials and, on the other, a variety of local notables. Among such groups, a significant level of everyday bilingualism resulted,27 although to what extent such ‘Ottomanization’ extended into literary culture is another matter.28 Despite these variations, it is likely that Turkish was a workable tool of oral communication throughout the greater part of the empire, operating as an essential lingua franca. The linguistic classification of Turkish as a language of Altaic srcin unrelated, and implicitly alien, to the Indo-European and Semitic languages spoken by Ottoman subject peoples is irrelevant when examining its practical use among contemporaries. Loan words for essential items were common in both directions and in virtually all languages, as any survey of terms – particularly for food, dress and other items of material culture – would show.29 The use of more abstract Arabic and Persian vocabulary in the formal written language simply parallels in a different sphere the borrowing of such practical, everyday terms. Differences in spoken language, because they were so common and relatively flexible, were not necessarily an obstacle to understanding. However, oral communication was one thing; reading documents and texts, and participating in learned culture, was another. Understanding of written language within the empire was obviously limited in all areas and all cultures to small literate minorities. Literacy rates in any of the major languages spoken in the Ottoman empire before were probably as variable at any given time as they were in the major languages of Europe, higher in urban areas where schools were founded and government officials, merchants and community leaders recorded transactions on paper, and barely measurable in rural areas, where to per cent of the population lived a largely paper-free existence. Oral and aural capacity to transmit and receive information remained dominant; the content of writ30 ten documents was routinely by a courier’s oral message, useful at the time but not for the later historian.amplified
OTTOMAN LITERARY CULTURE
In accordance with long-established Muslim practice, the Ottomans recognized the religious, legal and cultural autonomy of Christian and Jewish confessional communities within the empire, both in the Balkans, where non-Muslims were initially in the majority, and in Anatolia and the Arab world, where a myriad of ancient Christian
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churches and small Jewish communities survived.31 Compulsion in either Islamification or Turkification of whole communities would have been counter to the Islamic governing ethos, unnecessarily antagonistic and impractical in numerical terms. At a popular level, Christians and Muslims often shared elements of religious practice, both revering the same saint or holy place and participating together in seasonal rituals.32 However, among the literate, religious and therefore literary cultures remained distinct, and non-Muslim learned traditions were maintained separately under Ottoman rule. A recent study of Belgrade, a major Ottoman administrative centre in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, indicates that, despite much social and interaction‘no in hint this confessionally and relatively cosmopolitan city,occupational there was nevertheless of intellectualmixed communication between Muslim 33 and non-Muslim religious communities’. On the other hand, a study of literature printed in Istanbul during the nineteenth century suggests that, in this era at least, it was possible for Turks, Greeks, Armenians and other groups to participate to some degree in a common literary culture.34 Printing, translation, the inspiration provided by French and other western models, plus the sophisticated cultural environment of Istanbul in the tanzimat reform era, must all have influenced this participation. However, such a development raises questions about where the distinction between popular and learned literatures really lay in earlier periods, and whether the cultural dichotomy which appears so clear in Belgrade tells the whole story. Leaving aside the liturgical and theological aspects, in terms of storytelling, of heroic and edifying tales, where did shared popular culture end and differentiated learned culture begin? The Alexander legend, for example, was familiar to sultans and peasants alike, in a variety of languages and registers, as were the exploits of the Christian Aya Yorgi (St George) and his alter ego, the Muslim popular hero Hızır Ilyas. 35 What role did literate converts play in the transmission of culture? Cross-cultural interpretations such as those discussed by Tijana Krstić may not have been unusual, albeit on a different level.36 What might the situation have been had Ottoman printing – and, with it, more accessible evidence of reading habits – been introduced sooner? Further study of pre- ‘Ottoman’ reading habits and cultural appreciation could yield surprising results.37 Leaving aside such broad speculations, the remainder of this essay focuses on ‘Ottoman literary culture’, in its usual meaning of the verse and prose forms of initially court-centred literature produced by and for the Osmanlılar, ‘the followers of [the House of] Osman’, the political and learned elites. Although only one of several written cultures within the empire, it was the one consciously developed to project Ottoman values and self-image among those who mattered. The following discussion asks both how this literary culture might be viewed in a comparative perspective and how we might assess the possible extent of its appeal. Ideally, in terms of the Ottoman world inIstanbul general, and we should consider the significance Ottoman literary culture beyond in the also reverse influence of Muslim of scholarly culture upon the Ottomans. There is currently no major modern ‘history of Ottoman literature’ in any western language. The nearest are the nineteenth-century, multi-volume studies of Ottoman poetry by the Austrian diplomat and scholar Joseph von Hammer (d. ) and the British Orientalist E. J. W. Gibb (d. ), published in the s and the s respectively. In Turkish, the broader, encyclopaedic works of scholars such as Mehmed Fuad Köprülü and Aıah Sırrı Levend, both writing in the mid-twentieth
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century, remain essential references, although the volume of publications on specific elements of Ottoman literature is now increasing rapidly.38 Until relatively recently, writing a general survey of pre-nineteenth-century Ottoman literature was fairly straightforward. It would begin with texts in ‘Old Anatolian Turkish’, the colloquial-cum-written language of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Anatolia, which remained the natural and most widespread idiom in ordinary communication, factual reportage and popular culture in Turkish-speaking communities throughout the Ottoman period. This continuity is illustrated by the poems attributed to Yunus Emre (d. ), which, in contrast to fourteenth-century texts in English or French, forsultans modernfrom native readers.IIOur survey would thenneed chartrelatively how, forlittle well commentary over a century, Mehmed (–) onwards sought to align Ottoman literature with the prestigious Perso-Islamic culture by attracting Persian poets and writers to their court and by encouraging the influence of Persian styles through translations and imitative works, particularly of poetry, metrical romances and historiography.39 This resulted by the late sixteenth century in Ottoman-Persian verse and prose texts of considerable linguistic and conceptual sophistication. Incorporation of the Arab world into the empire after and the foundation of more medreses under Ottoman patronage also produced a steady increase in knowledge of written Arabic and the more widespread use of Arabic words and phrases within the Ottoman-Persian written language. The pride taken in this aesthetic style is neatly encapsulated in the following declaration by Mehmed Nergisi (d. ), one of the most revered (and later most reviled) Ottoman prose stylists of the early seventeenth century, all of whose written work is located firmly at the complex end of the Ottoman language spectrum: the Turkish [sic] language of pleasing expression [is] distinguished by its gathering from the surrounding green meadows of various languages the choicest flowers of meaning approved by men of eloquence and, through collecting thence the fruits of clarity, admired for its natural qualities of pure and sound measure agreeable to the palate.40 The Ottoman text of this passage contains around per cent vocabulary of Turkish srcin, per cent Persian and per cent Arabic; it is held together, typically, by the Persian izafet grammatical construction. Such rhyming, rhetorical prose was closely related to chancery style and bears comparison with other belles lettres traditions, including those of the Byzantine empire and Italian Renaissance states, and ultimately with its Arabic and Persian models. 41 The resulting Ottoman Turkish ‘high style’ both helped give a cohesive cultural to Ottoman learned elites of cvery diverse and aspirations: pr ovided adefinition suitable vehicle through whichand to ruling voice imperial ultural andsrcins political ‘a facility with Ottoman, as opposed to simpler Turkish, came to be one of the hallmarks of membership in the Ottoman ruling class’. 42 The Ottoman empire could thereby be presented as the Muslim civilization which incorporated, superseded and outshone its predecessors. Proponents of Turki-i basit , the ‘simple Turkish’ style closer to the colloquial, always existed. With regard to court poetry, they appear only as a small minority, with occasional notable figures, such as the poet Nedim (d. ). 43 In prose, however, relatively s imple Turkish remained a valid option for
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writers seeking a wider audience, as seen in some writings by the learned polymath Katib Çelebi (d. ). 44 Finally, our survey would suggest how, from a high point somewhere in the seventeenth century, from which the empire was thought to be ‘in decline’ generally, literature was also considered to be gradually stagnating. A damning verdict by Gibb encapsulates the late nineteenth-century view: ‘that great race to which the Ottomans belong . . . has never produced any religion, philosophy or literature which bears the stamp of its individual genius’.45 Such a survey and conclusion could no longer stand scrutiny. Even in Gibb’s unequivocal statement which the prefaces his immensely detailed study of classical Ottoman premier literary genre – the six-volume inconsistency is evident. divan–poetry, While roundly condemning the Ottomans for slavishly following Persian exemplars, Gibb yet managed to celebrate several centuries of a highly artistic and meaningful idiom. His difficulty lay in reconciling the poetry which clearly fascinated him with the dismissive views during the s of his Ottoman acquaintances in London, men eager to develop new styles of Ottoman literature under western influences. They considered pre- Ottoman literary culture, including poetry, as largely imitative even when strikingly expressive and to have been, from around onwards, ‘mumbl[ing] the dry bones of a long-dead culture’.46 However, just as the assumption of a long political ‘decline’ no longer dominates Ottomanist studies, the tenacious notion of Ottoman cultural sterility arising out of statements such as that by Gibb is now being steadily undermined, from several angles.47 Hatice Aynur’s presentation of current Turkish scholarship on seventeenthand eighteenth-century Ottoman poetry emphasizes two significant points. First, it shows Ottoman poetry to have been a varied and constantly evolving art form, rather than one which had become fossilized by the early seventeenth century. Second, her survey suggests that over the centuries thousands of men, and a few women, must have contributed to the genre.48 Although the most well-known poets are generally those who attracted court patronage, composing and reciting verse was a highly regarded activity throughout Ottoman society.49 Men from all walks of life composed verse. Istanbul, with its concentration of wealthy patrons, remained the centre of poetic activity, but not the only one. Mustafa Ali noted in ‘more than twenty poets’ at the court of Prince Selim (later Selim II, –) in Kütahya in western Anatolia, and in the mid-s ‘found some thirty poets in residence’ in Baghdad (not a centre of princely government).50 The ‘urbane and witty gentlemen’ of Ohrid admired by Evliya Çelebi and the aljamiado poets of Albania were not isolated examples of provincial participation in the so-called elite Ottoman culture. Comparatively little work has been done on the social context and reception of Ottoman poetry, as opposed to the another. technicalItaspects of composition andthe theclose innerassociation world of influence one poet upon is nevertheless clear that of divan of poetry with Sufi mysticism, the itinerant tradition of sufi learning, and the popularity of taverns and coffeehouses among poets and dervishes from various backgrounds ensured that Ottoman divan poetry was far from an elite, Istanbul-based preserve.51 The names of many poets and writers indicate strong provincial connections, whether places of srcin or of association ,52 indicating that echoes of Ottoman culture could both filter down the social scales and radiate through provincial centres, particularly in Anatolia and the Balkans. The extent to which provincial governors
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and their ‘pasha households’ reflected the cultural as well as the organizational and clientage aspects of the Ottoman centre deserves closer study, especially the degree to which they connected with local communities and thereby conveyed elements of specifically Ottoman culture. Much of Mustafa Ali’s literary output was dedicated to the provincial governors and commanding generals whom he served outside Istanbul; Evliya Çelebi’s position of educated companion to his kinsman Melek Ahmed Paşa enabled him to undertake many of his extensive travels during the pasha’s provincial appointments.53 As indicated above, both writers appear to have found congenial company in the provinces. In the Arabic-speaking parts of the empire, Ottoman cultural elements wereasapparently evident to 54some even in in such prestigious of Arab culture Damascus and Cairo. Dinadegree Rizk Khoury, observing how centres the eighteenth-century Jalili governors of Mosul sought to create their own court culture, draws attention to Mosuli intellectuals’ close interest in political developments in Istanbul, and to shared cultural values.55 While such values may have been as much Muslim as Ottoman, and the political dimension cannot be overlooked, this connection is nevertheless indicative of a certain Ottoman cultural influence. Notable among the innumerable aspirant literary figures drawn to Istanbul from the provinces is the poet Nabi (d. ), whose output also exemplifies many of the points already made about Ottoman literature. The son of a learned and religious family in Urfa, south-eastern Anatolia, in the mid-s Nabi travelled independently to Istanbul, where he spent some twenty years and through his literary ability gained the patronage of a close companion of Mehmed IV (–). Most of his later life was spent in Aleppo, writing in semi-retirement. His ten major works range in style from the complex inşa prose of the account of his pilgrimage to Mecca in –, written for presentation to the sultan, to the relatively simple verse of the book of advice written in for his seven-year-old son. Other works include two anthologies of divan poetry, one Turkish and one Persian, a verse account of the circumcision festival of given for the sons of Mehmed IV, a translation into ‘simple Turkish’ of a popular collection of forty sayings concerning the Prophet Muhammed, and a collection of Nabi’s own letters to Ottoman friends and statesmen. 56 In other words, Nabi composed in a variety of genres, in two languages, and in differing registers of written Ottoman for a relatively diverse range of readers, adapting his style to suit the purpose of each work. An alternative and intriguing insight into the compilation of at least some Ottoman texts and into the use of language is offered in the recent publication of the ‘autobiographies’ of the sixteenth-century chief architect Sinan (d. ).57 Five texts are presented, all by one author. The introductions to each of the first four are sequential elaborations of the same basic account, compiled srcinally from Sinan’s dictation. They present a rarewere opportunity study theinprocess of composition, as how simple statements gradually to elaborated, what form, where and such why prayers and poetry were introduced, the relationship between prose and verse, and the varying vocabulary and imagery used as the text was developed. The fifth text is a work of consciously literary inşa prose, different in format to the other four, but obviously dependent upon them for content. Together, they show an Ottoman text literally under construction. Finally, it may also be useful to re-evaluate the significance of the Ottoman relationship to Arabic and Persian cultural models. Given that major Ottoman engagement
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with this cultural heritage occurred at roughly the same time and in similar ways to the early modern engagement with the Greek and Latin heritage in the west, why is only one of these movements considered a renaissance with positive outcomes? 58 Equally, there are many parallels between the Ottoman relationship to the Perso-Islamic heritage and that of other Turkic ruling dynasties, which undermine the notion of an imitative, relatively unimaginative Ottoman attachment. Not only did the Persian influence upon Turkish courtly culture in Anatolia begin with the Seljuks in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and thus pre-date the establishment of the Ottoman emirate, it was also dominant in the other major Turkic empires – Uzbek, Mughal andbetween Safavidthe – of the early era. Morehad generally, some degree of cross-influence Turkish and modern Persian languages existed for centuries in northern Iran and Central Asia. One particular cultural model for sixteenth-century Ottomans was the court of the last Timurid sultan of Herat, Hüseyin Baykara (d. ), patron of the Persian poet Cami and of the vezir Mir Ali Şir Nevai (d. ). The latter’s ‘Evaluation of the two languages’ held that his own literary language, Çağatay Turkish, was richer than Persian, which it subsumed. Çağatay Turkish remained the written and spoken idiom of the successor Uzbek state until the early twentieth century.59 In northern India, the Mughal empire founded by the Çağatayspeaking Timurid prince Babur (d. ) took adherence to Persian much further. By around Persian had been adopted both as the written language of literature and administration and as the preferred spoken idiom of the elite. As Mehmed II had tried to attract Persian scholars and poets to Istanbul in the mid-fifteenth century, so too did the Mughal emperor Akbar (–) a century later. 60 In Iran, the Turkic dynasty founded by Ismail Safavi in grafted a Turkish-speaking political-military elite onto indigenous Persian-speaking literary and administrative groups, resulting in a third variant on the Turkish-Persian cultural relationship.61 Seen in these broader perspectives, the Persian influence upon Ottoman appears much less dominant and prescriptive. Persian did not become the first language spoken at the sultan’s court, as it did in Muslim India; nor from the late sixteenth-century did it remain a language of choice for much literary composition beyond certain types of poetry. Ottoman was a form of Turkish considerably enriched by Persian elements, but – arguably – not overtaken by them. The influence of Arabic upon written Ottoman was also profound, although in comparison with Persian few literary works were composed entirely in this language. However, until at least the late seventeenth century, most works of religious and judicial scholarship were composed in Arabic, and facility with the written language was compulsory for medrese students, from among whom the learned elite were drawn. 62 Rudiments of Arabic might also be gleaned by many from Koran classes and elementary education in boyhood. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth an ambitious Ottoman student from Anatolia or the Balkans might follow centuries, the well-established tradition of travelling for his education, spending several years with highly regarded teachers in Damascus and Cairo and often combining study in the Hijaz cities of Mecca and Medina with performance of the pilgrimage. With the establishment in the s of the Süleymaniye colleges in Istanbul as the highest level of Ottoman religious education, there was less incentive to travel and more reason to focus on the centre of patronage and employment in the capital. Although after it was easier to visit the major Arab cities, paradoxically a scholar’s need to do so was largely diminished.
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As the study of the history of Ottoman language use gathers pace, our understanding of it can only become more nuanced. That there was a natural need to develop, on paper at least, an imperial idiom to serve political purposes and to provide a badge of cultural identity is generally accepted as a feature of the fifteenth- and, especially, the sixteenth-century Ottoman world. Thereafter, as membership of ‘the Ottoman group’ began to expand in the seventeenth century, it drew into its cultural orbit a much greater range and number of people of varying levels of education, outlook and political commitment. What effects this greater participation had upon the use of language and the production of literary work is a major topic for study, which will usefully move away from the traditional focus on official texts and the contents of the sultan’s library. NOTES * My thanks to Nelly Hanna, Metin Kunt and Rhoads Murphey for comments on an earlier version of this essay. Faroqhi : –, in a guide for new researchers on the problems, pitfalls and pleasures of studying Ottoman topics. For an indication of the progress and potential of literary studies, see Aynur . For modern editions, and for certain edited collections of Ottoman documents, see the list of published Ottoman sources in the Reference section of this volume. On the Ottoman legacy and perceptions of it, see Brown , especially the essays by Barbir and Todorova. Âli , –; also Tietze . Iz ; Kerslake : –. Interest is increasing in other types of text, e.g., Kafadar . For a broader perspective on Turkish, see Kamusella : –. Strauss a: –; Houston : – on linguistic variety within early modern European states. Strauss a; Versteegh : –. Versteegh : –. My thanks to Nelly Hanna for this point. On resettlement policies, see chapter , by Rhoads Murphey, in this volume. Dankoff . Evliya Çelebi : –. Ibid.: , –; on early Ottoman buildings in the Balkans, see Kiel ; on historiographical interpretations of Islamization in the Balkans, see Zhelyazkova . For Bosnian merchants from Sarajevo and Mostar petitioning the Doge of Venice in Turkish in , see Murphey : –, –. Elsie : . Balta ; Strauss : –. This example supports the argument that, because Turkish was not a liturgical language too closely identified with another religion, there would have been less reluctance among non-Muslims to using it. Houston : –, especially re France; Anderson : – on administrative vernaculars. Çiçek ; see also the essays by Rossitsa Gradeva and Eugenia Kermeli in this volume, chapters and respectively. Minkov : –. On educated captives employed as Ottoman interpreters, see chapter , by Tijana Krstić, in this volume. Stavrides , which also assesses Mahmud Pas¸a’s reputation as the exemplary ‘sultan of
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vezirs’ on account of his cultural patronage and Muslim piety. See also Murphey : , for a sixteenth-century account of Sokollu Mustafa Pas¸a’s visit to his home region in Bosnia. Kunt . On language use in Ottoman Hungary, see chapter , by Gábor Ágoston, in this volume. But see Ze’evi : – for the devs¸irme srcin of the Ridwan dynasty of governors of Gaza in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See chapter , by Ehud Toledano, in this volume. For eighteenth-century views, see Barbir : –; Rafeq . E.g., Lewis . Cf. Kahane et al. , the classic study of Greek and Italian borrowings in Turkish nautical vocabulary from the early Ottoman period onwards. Zack shows how far Turkish vocabulary had penetrated spoken Arabic by the seventeenth century (my thanks to Nelly Hanna for this reference). Houston on pre-modern European literacy generally, – on ‘oral and aural culture’. See also Nelly Hanna’s discussion of literacy among Egyptian artisans, chapter in this volume. On the so-called millet system, see Masters : –. Cf. Hasluck ; Ocak : –. Fotic´ : . Strauss b, ; see also essays on earlier non-Muslim book production within the empire in Hitzel . On the Alexander legend, see Stoneman ; on St George/Hızır, see Ocak : ; Brotton . See her essay in this volume (chapter ), including comments on Ottoman use of the Alexander legend. On the emergence of ‘a non-religious dimension to culture’ in eighteenth-century Cairo, see Hanna : –; on books listed in Damascus inventories c., see Establet and Pascual . As indicated in Halman et al. , a four-volume multi-contributor history of Turkish literature. Sohrweide ; Woodhead . Woodhead : . On ins¸a style and letter-writing in Arabic, see Gully . On the Arabic and Persian content in literary Ottoman, see Buğday ; cf. also Tietze . Fleischer a: ; Necipoğlu : –, on the curriculum of the palace school for the future political elite. Sılay ; Murphey : –. Cf. Katib Çelebi . Gibb –: I, . Ibid.: I, . Cf. Bauer for the ‘deplorable’ state of study into Mamluk literature, resulting partly from the similarly deleterious influence of nineteenth-century ‘western prejudices’. Aynur : , notes , poets recorded just in eighteenth-century Ottoman biographical dictionaries of poets; Andrews and Kalpaklı : –, discuss sixteenth-century Ottoman women poets. Aynur : –. Fleischer a: , , and passim, for the late sixteenth-century cultural milieu generally. Andrews and Kalpaklı : –. E.g., Aynur : , –. Fleischer a; Dankoff . Winter . Khoury : –, especially . Aynur : ff.; Cos¸kun . Sinan .
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Andrews and Kalpaklı strongly advocate further comparative study of Ottoman and European literatures. Eraslan . Alam ; see also Dale . See, e.g., Perry . Cf. Katib Çelebi : –, and Chambers on courses of study for high-flying students in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries respectively.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ETHNIC ITY, RAC E, RELIG ION AND SOCIAL CLASS Ottoman markers of difference
Baki Tezcan
M
ore than thirty five modern nations, from Slovakia and Ukraine in the north to Eritrea and Yemen in the south, and from Algeria in the west to Azerbayjan in the east, have at some point in their history been partially or wholly part of the Ottoman empire. During the last two centuries many of these modern nation-states have become independent and have developed national historiographies that have – with varying degrees of success – constructed nationalities and projected them back to the Middle Ages or the ancient world. Accordingly, it has become increasingly difficult to reconstruct the experience of Ottoman subjects in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire in which loyalty to the ultimate political authority had little to do with one’s national belonging, and the term ‘nation’ meant quite different things. The difficulty is not just an intellectual one brought about by the rise of nationalist historiographies. The last couple of centuries have also witnessed an endless shuffling of people at the whim of political authorities, who did not hesitate to engage in a range of activities, from genocidal massacres to population transfers, with a view to creating nations which would be as ethnically and religiously homogeneous as possible. Thus, in many parts of the former Ottoman territories, the physical remains of the diverse Ottoman past consist of empty churches, mosques, or synagogues which have lost their congregations. In a nationalist present that hails homogeneity, it has become harder to imagine a diverse society in the past, all the more so because the children of the people who constituted that past are no longer there. In short, as a result of the history and historiography of the last two centuries, attempting to reconstruct the Ottoman past as it was experienced by the peoples of the is aTourkokratia daunting task. Such reconstructions usedoftoa oscillate images of a empire merciless (‘Turkish rule’, Greek) and tolerant between Muslim empire that created the Pax Ottomanica both in the region and for its subjects of different ethnicities and religions.1 While neither of these two diametrically opposed images could adequately reflect the Ottoman past, studies on the subject of Ottoman ethnic and religious groups were, until recently, written generally in defence of one version against the other. However, as the assumptions of nationalism came to be questioned by scholars,2 a new generation of historians has chosen to focus on the actual
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experiences of Ottoman subjects as reflected in various contemporary sources, especially the court records, and to revise the more simplistic views of the past. The purpose of this essay is not to provide a summary of these more recent studies, on some of which more can be found elsewhere in this volume. 3 Instead, taking these studies as a point of departure, I will attempt to construct a historical model which could accommodate the multiplicity of Ottoman communities at any point in time during the history of the empire as well as the shifting relationships between them. My inspiration comes from the work of Brian Catlos, who suggests that inter communal relations in the pre-modern Mediterranean were based on the principle of 4
convenience, that is toIberia. say, conveniencia opposed to convivencia . Catlos’sMediterwork is grounded in medieval He suggestsasthat the diversity of the medieval ranean (c.–) was the consequence of a series of relationships born of a perceived mutual benefit among majority and minority ethno-religious groups, reinforced by formal agreements set in law, and grounded in a mutually-conceded, if limited, legitimacy. These relations were subject to on-going renegotiation, either formally or informally, and the standing of minority groups tended to improve or decline according to their role and influence in the political and economic system of the principality which they inhabited.5 According to Catlos, a minority group’s capacity to dominate ‘socio-economic and administrative niches, which were not served by the majority, and yet which were crucial to the larger functioning of the economy, and in particular to the ruling elite’, was essential for that group’s survival. Their displacement from such niches as a result of socio-economic change contributed to their decline and persecution.6 In this essay, I use Catlos’ model in order to conceptualize the historical experience of Ottoman communities. This provides a productive starting point from which to approach Ottoman communities, especially if one wishes to avoid the moralizing narratives of tolerance vs. intolerance, or such grand notions as the clash of civilizations. However, in order to apply Catlos’ model to the Ottoman empire, it must be modified somewhat to allow for ethnic diversity within religious communities and to allow more room for politics, both internal and international. To start with similarities between Catlos’ model and the Ottoman historical experience, there is no doubt that Ottoman authorities thought about crucial ‘socioeconomic and administrative niches’ when they considered their relations with the representatives of Ottoman communities. The long-standing urban professional experiences of Armenians, Greeks and Jews provided Ottoman cities with fine craftsmen, and major such as goldsmiths, international excellent intermediaries, professionals, such such as multilingual as architects merchants. and medical The role doctors, that many representatives of these communities played in public finance as tax collectors and creditors is also very well known. It is not surprising that one of the first acts of Mehmed II after the conquest of Constantinople was to order the deportation of Christian and Jewish, as well as Muslim, families from various parts of Anatolia and the Balkans to be resettled in his new capital.7 The existence of Muslim families in this example should be noted. As will be discussed below, in this early period Muslims were regarded as just one of several Ottoman communities.
— Ethnicity, race, religion and soc
ial class —
Some professional niches were available for Ottoman Christian communities in the countryside as well. For instance, Muslim peasants would most likely not engage in swine husbandry or wine production, leaving to Christians those activities shunned by their own religion. However, such niches were not as significant for the Muslim majority in the empire as were the urban professions mentioned above. Once settled, there was not much of a difference between a Turkish farmer and, for example, an Armenian one. Their ethnic or religious differences did not matter much; their most important distinction was the one they shared: being a peasant – that is, a taxproducer for the ruling class. Therefore the conveniencia model, which foregrounds the professional filled minority communities, needworks certainwell modifications when appliedniches outside theby cities. On the other hand, might this model when considering certain political needs of the royal authority, especially if we apply the model to different ethnic-geographic groups within the same religious community. The way in which the Ottoman centre approached its Kurdish periphery is a fitting example. Ten years after Baghdad had fallen to the Safavids in the early s, a bureaucrat in the Ottoman capital tried to persuade Murad IV (–) to treat the Kurdish lords well by making the latter’s illustrious ancestor Süleyman the Magnificent (–) declare: Just as God, be He praised and exalted, vouchsafed to Alexander ‘the two horned’ (zû’l-qarnayn) to build the wall of Gog, so God made Kurdistan act in the protection of my imperial kingdom like a strong barrier and an iron fortress against the sedition of the demon Gog of Persia. A thousand thanks and praises to the presence of the Almighty, creator of the races of mankind. It is hoped that, through neglect and carelessness, our descendants will never let slip the rope of obedience [binding] the Kurdish commanders (ümera) [to the Ottoman state] and never be lacking in their attentions to this group.8 In the early sixteenth century, Istanbul’s alliance with Kurdish lords had secured the political allegiance and military support of large parts of Kurdistan to the Ottomans rather than the Safavids.9 Now was the time to remember this in order to reconquer Baghdad, which Murad IV did in , approximately five years after the above passage was written. In short, the principle of convenience is indeed helpful in approaching the relations of the Ottoman centre with various Ottoman communities, both Muslim and nonMuslim. This principle is also instructive when we leave the domain of the political authority and focus on individual members of Ottoman communities. OTTOMAN IDENTITIES
When explaining the multi-layered and multi-faceted nature of individual Ottoman identities to American undergraduate students, I remind them of the primary meaning of identity as stated in the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘the quality or condition of being the same in substance, composition, nature, properties, or in particular qualities under consideration’. In the process of identifying ourselves, we use the qualities that we share with others, such as being American, Christian or anarchist. Yet at the same time each one of us shares different qualities with different groups, hence our
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multiple identities: ‘Muslim like Ahmad, Shiite like Hasan, Iranian-American like Fatima, middle class like Michael, female like Grace, cool like Joy’. Ottomans were not very different from modern-day Americans with their multifaceted identities. Take Eremya Çelebi Kömürjian, for instance. He was an Orthodox Armenian layman, some of whose writings suggest that he was not very fond of living under Muslim rule. But then he had good relations with many high-ranking Ottoman officials and made a lot of money thanks to his connections with the state. Moreover he had no problem with writing in Armeno-Turkish, a language which offers some surprising phrases to readers of Turkish, who mostly expect that users of Turkish must have been Turkish and Muslim in the early modern TakeTurks), such phrases as bizim 10 (our Armenian ‘nation’) or dinsiz (the infidel for instance. ermen tayfasy t’urkperiod.
So Eremya Çelebi was ‘Christian like Yorgo, Armenian like Garo, a state contractor like Ali, and a writer in Turkish like Hasan’. Depending on the specific interaction in which Eremya Çelebi was engaged on any given day, he could evoke one of the facets of his complex identity conveniently – for instance, by underlining his membership in the Ottoman financial elite when he bid or struck partnerships for tax-farm contracts. The Ottoman political authorities, in their turn, conveniently accepted Eremya Çelebi’s intermediacy in public finance. He was also clearly a member of the Ottoman literati. His title, Çelebi, one used by the learned Ottoman establishment, is one clear indication of this. His awareness of Muslim Ottoman authors and the latter’s awareness of him in their respective works is another.11 Continuing from Eremya Çelebi’s example, diversity seems to work best when individuals have a wide network of affiliations, allowing them to relate to multiple collectives by evoking different facets of their multi-faceted identities. Not surprisingly, if one of these facets receives more attention than the others, the individual might lose touch with some of the collectives he or she has been affiliating with and come to essentialize that particular facet of his or her identity. The key to the healthy functioning of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious Ottoman society was, then, perhaps not so much the absence of ‘national’ identities as a lack of need to essentialize them. An Ottoman author of Kurdish srcin, Şukri, who wrote a history of the reign of Selim I (–) in Turkish verse and presented it to Süleyman, probably meant this when he wrote: Türk ilen Türk ve Kürd ilen Kürdem (I am a Turk [while being] with a Turk and a Kurd [while being] with a Kurd).12 That Ottoman individuals were well aware of their ‘national’ identities, based on their ethno-geographical and racial ties, and used them for their own advantage when they needed to could easily be confirmed by looking at the Ottoman ruling class itself. Metin Kunt demonstrated the significance of cins as ‘ethnic-regional’ solidarity by devşirme studying the tiesfrom among the the – thatpopulation is, the personal slaves ofthe theBalkans sultan who were collected among Christian of Anatolia, and the Caucasus. He noted the existence of alliances based on cins connections, such as Abkhazian, Albanian or Bosnian factions.13 A case also occurs of the term cinsiyet being used in a racial sense when the subject of reference was the ties between an Ottoman scholar of African slave srcin and the black eunuchs of the palace. 14 Yet these ties, however important they may have been, were only one set of ties among many others, the most significant of which for the ruling class was their loyalty to the sultan. Thus when Melek Ahmed Paşa was asked by the grand vezir in whether he would fight
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Hasan Paşa, an Abkhazian like himself, Melek Ahmed quickly replied that he would fight against any enemy of the sultan.15 Loyalty to the person of the sultan or the empire was not just a phenomenon found among the members of the Muslim ruling class. As late as , Anthimos, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, stated that Our Lord . . . raised out of nothing this powerful Empire of the Ottomans in the place of our Roman [Byzantine] Empire which had begun, in certain ways, to deviate from the beliefs of the Orthodox faith, and He raised up the Empire of the Ottomans higher than any16other Kingdom so as to show without doubt that it came about by Divine Will. Eremya Çelebi, in his History of Istanbul, refers to the sultan as ‘our emperor’ and boasts about the many ambassadors who come to his court from India, Central Asia, Persia, Russia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Morocco, Genoa, Poland, Austria, France, England and the Netherlands in a way which suggests that he is as proud of the power of his sultan as a Muslim Ottoman would be.17 A seventeenth-century Orthodox priest from Serres in modern Greece, Synadinos, who wrote a local chronicle in the Byzantine tradition, refers to the Ottoman sultan in the Byzantine fashion as the basileus, never calling into question his legitimacy of rule. 18 Thus it was quite possible to accommodate multiple national (ethno-geographical and/or racial) as well as religious loyalties under the umbrella of political loyalty to the person of the sultan or the empire. The principles that govern the relations between different communities in Catlos’s model are ‘reinforced by formal agreements set in law, and grounded in a mutuallyconceded, if limited, legitimacy’. In the case of the Ottoman empire, these principles came to have a little more than ‘limited legitimacy’. Ottoman jurists’ law – a term preferred here instead of şeriat, as it underlines the role of jurists in the articulation of the law – did not discriminate among different nationalities as long as they were Muslim. When it came to non-Muslims, the law had a built-in space that protected the rights of Christians and Jews without, however, granting them full-scale equality with Muslims. While such a legal system should indeed have had only limited legitimacy in the eyes of its Christian and Jewish subjects, the archival record suggests that Christians and Jews used the Ottoman courts much more frequently than previously believed. Convenience seems to have played a role in this development as well. Marriage and divorce fees at the kadı courts were lower than those collected by the bishops. In addition, simpler procedures – for example, no investigation into the motives for divorcing, no conciliation terms, and no bans on subsequent marriages – and to evade some canonical restrictions might have induced Christians to the use wish the services of the .19 kadı When such methods to circumvent the canonical authorities were more difficult to follow – for instance, in Istanbul, where one was within physical proximity of the patriarchate – Christian (and Jewish) women resorted to Ottoman courts to convert to Islam in order to secure a divorce from their husbands, as a Muslim woman could not be married to a non-Muslim man.20 This suggests that Christians and Jews not only used Ottoman courts for their own business but were also aware of some of its
— Baki Tezcan —
finer points which they could exploit to their own advantage. Recent research on the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts in the Ottoman empire suggests that even in such legal fields as inheritance the Ottoman courts had the ultimate authority.21 Even though there were other courts in the daily life of Ottoman subjects, such as the communal and ecclesiastical courts discussed elsewhere in this volume,22 the courts presided over by kadıs seem to have been the ultimate arbiters of justice. Therefore these courts should simply be called ‘Ottoman courts’ rather than ‘ kadı courts’, a term that is still prevalent in the historiography even though it implies a legal system in which there were multiple networks of courts with equal jurisdictional authorities, with ‘kadı courts’ one ofofthem. The being imposition a particular legal system, which is historically connected with a given religious tradition, on the followers of different religious-legal traditions appears problematic from a pluralistic perspective. Nevertheless, it could integrate different communities of the empire into one legal system and thus increase the legitimacy of the system as a whole. The frequent recourse by Christian and Jewish Ottoman subjects to Ottoman courts supports this assumption. In this particular sense, the legal arrangements that secured the Ottoman version of Catlos’ conveniencia had more than ‘limited legitimacy’. They had become the law of the land in a way not unlike that by which the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition became the law of the land in North America as a result of conquest. All of this should not be taken to mean, however, that the communities of Ottoman society were well integrated in all aspects of their lives. As Catlos asserts, ‘diversity in pre-modern societies could only function if clear communal boundaries were maintained’.23 Maintaining such boundaries was important for the survival of minority groups and the continuing dominance of the majority group. Not surprisingly, one of the areas in which these dynamics were most visible was the patriarchal hierarchies involved in miscegenation. That is why, for instance, Muslim men could marry Christian and Jewish women while a Christian or Jewish man could only marry a Muslim woman if he agreed to convert. While the boundaries between communities were porous, they were so only in one direction, towards Islam. A Muslim who left his or her religion would be punished by death. Also, the principle of convenience was not as convenient to the minority group as it was to the majority. This was especially so when socio-economic tensions were carried over to intercommunal relations. Catlos draws attention to the fact that, even though the Christian majority in thirteenth-century Aragon was much wealthier than both the Muslim and Jewish minorities, there were still many ‘middle-class’ Jews and Muslims who were wealthier than many Christians. 24 To make up for a state of affairs that seemed inappropriate to poorer Christians, minority groups were occasionally subjected to economic actions that would confirm theirtheir secondary status. Populistby movements articulating inequalities expressed sense of deprivation targeting minority communities.25 The channelling of socio-economic grievances towards minorities is clearly observable in the Ottoman empire. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when the absolutist political posture of the court drew much criticism, a Jewish woman became the target of rebels. In the last days of March , Esperanza Malchi, the Jewish kiera (‘lady’ in Greek), known to have been very close to the sultan’s mother, was lynched by imperial cavalrymen who believed that the debased coins with
— Ethnicity, race, religion and soc
ial class —
which they had been paid had come through her tax-farm payments. The soldiers had also demanded the heads of the chief gardener and the sultan’s chief white eunuch, but were appeased after they had lynched Malchi and her son. 26 It was also in this era of extreme social turmoil both in the capital and the provinces that orders were issued banning the wearing of silk by Christians and Jews. Soon after, the use of alcohol was strictly prohibited, all taverns were closed, and the office of the finance ministry which collected taxes from the sale of alcohol was abolished – though all of these restrictions were lifted and the alcohol tax was reinstated eighteen months later, in autumn .27 In short, accommodating the principle of convenience was of forthe minority groups, it washowever ultimately based on acceptance of the political dominance majority, or, at least, of the symbols thereof. What, then, is the advantage of the use of this model over the discourse of tolerance vs. intolerance? Most obviously, it removes religious labels from the historical analysis and provides us with a model that works in multiple contexts with different majority and minority groups. However, a much more significant advantage offered by this model is the possibility of integrating socioeconomic issues into intercommunal relations, and even of assigning primacy to them in explaining change. CHANGING RELATIONS BETWEEN
OTTOMAN
COMMUNITIES
I will now focus on the question of long-term change in the relations between Ottoman communities, byout suggesting that once it wassettled, social mobility was the destabilizing factor. It was pointed above that, there waswhich little difference between a Turkish Muslim peasant and, for example, a Greek Christian one. Other than raising pigs and producing wine, the Greek Christian peasant would not occupy a particular niche in rural society. Yet, he or she would definitely be paying taxes. Perhaps, then, the members of the minority group did not necessarily have to dominate a niche: it was enough for them to be good taxpayers, which was convenient for the ruling class. For the minority peasant, the convenience was that he or she continued, just as before, to be a taxpayer after the Ottoman conquest. If anything, the Ottomans were known to have decreased the tax ratios in certain areas to ease the shift in political loyalties from former rulers to themselves. There was not much else that affected a peasant’s life directly. I would argue further that the minority peasant’s tax-paying subject position was in a sense key to his or her potential affiliation with other peasants belonging to the Muslim majority. Unlike in the city, where professions and trade brought people from different communal backgrounds together ininallwhich kindsaofGreek interactions, villages were much more monolithic. Thus, again, the way peasant from a Greek village and a Turkish peasant from a Turkish village could relate to each other would be on the basis of their shared tax-paying subject status as far as their relationship to the imperial centre or to their immediate tax collector was concerned. The central political authority was well aware of this fact. The relevant political literature that touches upon the relations between the ruling class and the subjects had only one term for the latter: reaya, ‘the flock’. It did not matter whether a peasant
— Baki Tezcan —
was Muslim or Christian – both would be a part of the flock. Despite the fact that Christian peasants paid additional taxes in the form of cizye (the non-Muslim poll tax), in terms of being disenfranchised vis-à-vis the ruling class, they were as far away from political power as their Muslim neighbours in the next village. In fact, a Christian peasant might even have had a better chance of joining the ruling class in the fifteenth or the sixteenth centuries than a Muslim one because of the practice of devşirme, which supplied the sultan with loyal soldiers and administrators of Christian srcin. Thus, while in urban environments communal differences were mediated through economic and professional interactions, in rural areas there was little ground for communal differences to play a discriminatory as The all peasants the common denominator of being subjects in therole, flock. politicalultimately authoritiesshared addressed all communal groups in the same language and treated them similarly. Differences of class were the most significant differences in the political literature of the time. Authors warned their readers not to let members of the reaya join the ranks of the ruling class. Those people who did manage to find a way in were called ecnebi, or foreigner, even if they were of Muslim srcin – or perhaps because of their Muslim subject srcin. 28 The Ottoman ruling class srcinally consisted of conquerors who were predominantly of Turkish srcin and yet included many former members of the Byzantine and Balkan aristocracies. After the ascendancy of the devşirme in the second half of the fifteenth century, the ruling class came to consist of the descendants of the conquerors as well as the slaves of the sultan, who were of Christian srcin. To this ruling class, subjects of Muslim srcin were indeed ‘foreigners’. In short, the ruling class discriminated against all subjects in the same way, treating them all as ‘foreigners’. A simple Christian subject (unless he was selected as a devşirme) and a Muslim one were equally excluded from entry into the ruling class. As far as the Ottoman authorities were concerned, Muslims constituted one of the communities that they needed to manage and exploit by taxation. They happened to belong to the same religion as that followed by the conquerors, but in practice they were subjects, just like the Christians and Jews, whose taxes supported the ruling class. When around Kınalızade Ali considered the relationship between the masters of the state (devlet) and the reaya, it never occurred to him to separate Muslims from others. [As long as] the union that is concluded among the masters of the devlet lasts, the supremacy and domination, which are inseparable from that union, continue. It is an established fact that each devlet begins with a group of men entering an alliance and acting like the members of one body . . . in helping and supporting each other. Each individual has a certain degree of power, yet once their power is assembled in oneofplace, becomes more [the sum of] one’s power. atogether small group allied itmen prevails overthan many groups thateach are disunited. Is itThus not obvious that the number of men who are in possession of a devlet does not even amount to one hundredth of the number of that devlet’s subjects (reaya)? And yet since these men are allied and the subjects are not, the former become victors and rulers while the latter are defeated and ruled.29 Thus, as far as the Ottoman authorities were concerned, all subjects, whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish, were reaya, or their flock.
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ial class —
The reason for dwelling so long on this particular point – the common subjecthood of Christians, Jews and Muslims alike – is that it is central for us to understand how the principle of convenience stopped working in the later centuries of Ottoman history. According to Catlos,30 ‘it was the inability of minorities . . . to adapt to changes in the socio-economic environment that might displace them from their niches that tended to contribute to their decline and persecution’. While agreeing that socioeconomic change is the key to explaining the changing status of minorities, we should also note the political dynamics through which the effects of socio-economic mobility within the majority population are transformed into communal rifts in a multi-ethnic and society. these ispopulation, the formation of aiscollective identity that multi-religious connects the ruling classThe withfirst the of majority which at the heart of the development of modern nationalism. Even though not every Muslim joined the Ottoman ruling class in the seventeenth century, sizeable groups from among merchants and financiers did find ways of entering it, despite the protesters who called them ‘foreigners’. The late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were times of remarkable socio-political mobility in the Ottoman empire. The practice of devşirme came gradually to an end by the beginning of the eighteenth century as members of the Muslim upper middle c lasses came to man the administrative and military posts of the empire. 31 This was followed by a gradual shift in the meaning of the term ‘ reaya ’. From the eighteenth century onwards, ‘the flock’ came to mean Christian taxpayers only. 32 It is not that Muslims did not have to pay taxes any more. They continued to do so, bu t as ‘Muslims’, for this became the collective identity that connected the ruling class with the majority of the masses. This process is comparable to the rise of nationalism in Europe. The displacement of a former aristocratic ruling class by a larger bourgeoisie was followed by the invention of the ‘“nation,” the name given to itself by the “people” as it formed itself into the quasi-caste which it had never been in the past’.33 Obviously, not every Frenchman could become part of the ruling class, but each one of them could be proud to be a Frenchman and, with that pride, be induced to pay his taxes happily, while being conscripted and sent to wars in distant lands. Being French was the collective identity that tied the ruling class and the masses together and made the latter feel as if they had a share in the glories of their nation. Yet even a poor Frenchman had to feel superior to someone. Thus did racism in the modern sense first arise in a ‘democratic’ society, ‘a mass society whose expressed ideals were fraternal and egalitarian’.34 Around the same time white commoners in colonial America ‘found a shared identity as white men by asserting their superiority defined against Indians and Africans’.35 Not unlike the poor Frenchman or the white American commoner, the common Ottoman feltbythat belongedidentity to a political nation differences wereMuslim mediated thehecollective that tied him inorwhich her toclass the ruling class. While it was race that became the marker of this collective identity in colonial America, in the eighteenth-century Ottoman empire religion was being assigned that function. The ruling class continued to inclu de many non-Muslims in provincial as well as imperial administration, from kocabaşı s, or non-Muslim community leaders, to Phanariot princes who ruled Moldavia and Wallachia. 36 However, Muslims no longer constituted part of the reaya , the flock, and had moved up to become citizens of sorts.
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It is time to return to another point mentioned earlier. Medieval and early modern identities were multi-faceted, as individuals were able to relate to different groups by evoking a particular facet of their identity. Yet if one of the facets of an individual’s identity were to receive more attention than the others, that person might lose touch with some of the collectives he or she had been affiliating with and come to essentialize that one particular facet of his or her identity. The Ottoman empire in the nineteenth century provided ample opportunity for essentializing identities. As the empire could not compete with Russia militarily, and became increasingly subject to European imperialist designs politically, Russians became protectors of Orthodox Christians by the of the eighteenth century and the French oftoCatholics later on.Christian As these imperial end powers started offering economic advantages their Ottoman intermediaries whose protectors they had become, many an Ottoman Christian merchant found himself interacting more and more with European Christians and finding new meaning in his Christian identity as a key to economic and political privilege (which could even include citizenship papers). It seemed more convenient now to emphasize communal identities to the exclusion of others, as there were socio-economic and political advantages to be gained. It should not be surprising that the crystallization of a collective identity around the category of Muslim contributed to the alienation of Christian subjects of the Ottoman empire, who were left by themselves in the status of ‘flock’. Had the Ottoman empire been located on a continent more or less isolated, like the United States, this alienation could probably have been addressed successfully in the long term, as majority–minority relations are usually subject to continuing negotiations. Yet the Ottomans faced several powerful neighbours, whose interest in competing for the political loyalties of their Christian subjects complicated the course of such negotiations between Muslim rulers and these subjects. It seemed more convenient to ally with Russians for independence in Serbia or to secure British help for Greek independence rather than negotiating with Muslim overlords who were having difficulty adjusting themselves to the idea of full-scale equality with their Christian subjects. To put things in perspective, one might consider how long it took white Americans to get used to full-scale equality with Native or African Americans. Such international alliances between some Ottoman Christians and foreign powers, in turn, transformed the loyal Christian subjects of the empire into members of a fifth column in the eyes of many Muslims, who, in turn, started essentializing their Muslim identity. Thus between the beginning of the nineteenth century and that of the twentieth, the diversity of the Ottoman empire was replaced by several nation-states or colonies that became increasingly less diverse during the twentieth century. In retrospect, it seems that, as long as the most significant marker of difference in Ottoman society was the one rulerstheir and the subjectsdifferences (reaya), members of Ottoman communities werebetween able to the mediate communal by, on the one hand, forming a wide range of affiliations with members of other communities and, on the other, being reminded continually that, no matter which communal group they belonged to, they were all members of the ruler’s flock. Increasing social mobility, coupled with the development of a collective identity that brought the new ruling class together with the Muslim masses out of which they had emerged, destabilized the relations between Ottoman communities. The exploitation of this destabilization by European imperialism led to essentialization of communal identities and the
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eventual transformation of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society into much more monolithic nation-states. NOTES
For examples of such treatments, see the works cited in Gradeva : , n. . Anderson [] . E.g., the essays by Gábor Ágoston (Hungary, chapter ), Nelida Fuccaro (Kurdistan, chapter ), Rossitsa Gradeva (Ottoman courts in the Balkans, chapter ), Eugenia Kermeli (Greece, chapter ), Tal Shuval (Algiers, chapter ), Ehud Toledano (the Ottoman Arab provinces, chapter ), Stefan Winter (Shiites in Syria, chapter ), and Christine Woodhead (language use, chapter ). Catlos , . Catlos : . This paper is part of Catlos’s work-in-progress, tentatively entitled Paradoxes of pluralism: ethno-religious diversity and the medieval Mediterranean. Catlos . İnalcık –: –, . Murphey : (Turkish, p. ). Tezcan . For a detailed biography of Eremya Çelebi in English, see Sanjian and Tietze : –. Armeno-Turkish was Turkish in Armenian letters. A similar mixture of languages had earlier occurred in Crimea, where the Armenian diaspora had adopted Kipchak. This they took with them to Podolia, where in they printed arguably the first book in a Turkic language; see Chirli . The exemplary phrases are from Schütz : , . Bardakjian : ; Sanjian and Tietze : , n. . Şükrî, Selîmnâme, Topkapı Sarayı Kütüphanesi, Hazine –, f. b.
Kunt . Tezcan : . Kunt : . Clogg : . Eremya Çelebi Kömürcüyan : . Strauss : ; Synadinos . Ivanova : ; see also Rossitsa Gradeva’s essay in this volume, chapter . Baer . Kenanoğlu : –. See Eugenia Kermeli’s essay in this volume, chapter . Catlos : . Catlos : , fig. . Nirenberg . Her other son saved himself by converting to Islam and promising to pay their debts to the treasury. He apparently became known as Aksak Mustafa Çavuş and died during the reign of İbrahim (–); Selaniki Mustafa Efendi : II, –; Naima –: I, , ; the English ambassador Lello’s dispatch of March , National Archives, London, SP /,
; on: the term ‘ kiera’, see Mordtmann . f.Tezcan –. See, for instance, such late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century sources as the anonymous Hırzü’l-mülûk, in Yücel : – (facsimile, f. b); the anonymous Kitâb-ı Müstetâb, ibid.: (Ottoman text, p. ); and Koçi Beg risalesi : , . Kınalızade Ali, , book III, ; cf. a manuscript of the same text in Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Hamidiye , f. a. Catlos : . Tezcan . Even in the late seventeenth century, the term had no denominational connotations; see
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Meninski : II, c. –. Cf. Faroqhi c: : ‘From the th/th century onwards, the term is increasingly used for the Christian taxpayers only; th/th century population counts distinguish between recāyā and Islām’. Guillaumin : . Ibid.: . Taylor : xiii. Philliou .
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE KIZILBAŞ OF SYRIA AND OTTOMAN SHIISM *
Stefan Winter
T
he ‘Kızılbaş’ were essentially the antithesis of Ottoman din ü devlet, ‘religion and order’. The term, which refers to the red, twelve-pleated turban emblazoned with the names of the Shiite imams that was worn by the eastern Anatolian tribal followers of the Safavid sufi order of Ardabil in the late fifteenth century, seems already to have been used by Safavid leaders of the time. In Ottoman chancery sources it is first used in a derogatory sense when a number of these tribes began to revolt and helped shah Ismail conquer Tabriz in , laying the groundwork for the establishment of a Shiite rival state in Iran.1 In the mid-sixteenth century, judicial opinions by the Ottoman şeyhülislam (chief jurisprudent) Ebussuud Efendi (d. ) and others defined the Kızılbaş as illegal heretics whose elimination was a religious duty. This permitted the state to pursue a veritable inquisition against the heterodox tribesmen whose frequent revolts continued to shake Ottoman rule in Anatolia, while also providing a legal and ideological framework for further warfare against the Safavids. Although the Anatolian Kızılbaş gradually ceased to be a major concern for the Ottoman state – the – celali rebellions, though alluding to an earlier Kızılbaş revolt, in fact had nothing to do with them – the Iranians and their supporters in Iraq are characterized as Kızılbaş throughout the wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The conflict with the Kızılbaş is thus often seen as a basic fact of Ottoman and indeed Middle Eastern history in general, as the start of the empire’s uncompromisingly Sunni identity, as the paradigm for its treatment of minorities, and as the validation of an unbridgeable political split between Sunnism and Shiism. Given the importance of the challenge posed by the ‘Kızılbaş’ to the Ottomans, it is hardlytimes. surprising thatfive theycollections have beenofthe subject of sustained scholarlydealing interestspein modern At least Ottoman archival documents cifically with the Kızılbaş, the Bektaşis and other unorthodox groups have been published, re-edited, or translated in the past two decades.2 Numerous popular histories as well as a growing number of scholarly studies have also been devoted to the subject, the most recent of which have tended to emphasize the role which centre–periphery relations, the formulation of authoritative categories of orthodoxy and heterodoxy and the establishment of an early modern state bureaucracy played in the persecution of Shiites in the empire’s formative period.3 Despite all this attention it is somewhat noteworthy
— Stefan Winter —
that Ottomanists have not brought more interest to bear on one of the empire’s largest and best-documented heterodox populations, whose indigenous leaderships were consistently referred to as Kızılbaş in certain texts throughout the post-classical age and indeed well into the nineteenth century. The Twelver (Imami) Shiite communities in the mountain hinterlands of Tripoli, Sidon and Damascus – i.e., in Mount Lebanon, Jabal ‘Amil and the Bekaa Valley, all in today’s Lebanon – were integrated into the structure of Ottoman provincial government in the sixteenth century, with leading families such as the Hamadas and Harfushes acquiring tax farms and even formal recognition as sancakbeyis (district governors). In the later seventeenth century, however, Ottoman officials increasingly to define themthem, in sectarian whenever pursuing tax collection or punitivebegan campaigns against while atterms the same time turning effective sovereignty in the area over to the Druze emirs of Sidon. Although successive foreign occupations between and each seemed to bring the promise of greater local enfranchisement, in effect the reaffirmation of central authority in the nineteenth-century reforms, the growing involvement of European powers in Lebanese communal affairs, and finally the exile of the Harfush emirs to Edirne in to all intents and purposes marked the end of the ‘Kızılbaş’ problem in Syria. This essay traces the evolution of the rural Imami community of Syria in its rapport with the Ottoman state. After a survey of the region’s incorporation and the co-optation of its tribal leaderships, it argues that the Shiites were liable to be categorized as ‘Kızılbaş’ not on account of a hypothetical connection to Iran, as is sometimes claimed in contemporary literature, but as a legal device in order to justify official violence over more prosaic matters such as brigandage and tax evasion. The most intense punitive campaign against the Syrian Kızılbaş coincided with an unprecedented thaw in relations with Safavid Iran in the late seventeenth century, while renewed hostilities with Iran coincided with the quasi-recognition of a ‘Kızılbaş mukataa’ (fiscal district) in Mount Lebanon in the early eighteenth. We conclude by suggesting that the monetarization and then the decentralization of provincial rule in the ‘age of the ayan’ (local notables) ultimately provides a better paradigm for understanding the Ottomans’ position vis-à-vis the Syrian Shiites than the question of religious persecution or tolerance. CONQUEST AND COOPTATION
The Ottoman conquest of Syria in was facilitated not only by the defection of a number of Mamluk officers but also by the quick submission of the region’s most powerful Bedouin chiefs and other local notables to Selim I. The claim by later historians of Lebanon that an emir Fakhr al-Din Ma‘n ‘the First’ likewise paid tribute andcoastal was therefore entrusted to been rule over thetoDruze and other tribesthe of the highlands on the with state’sauthority behalf has shown be a myth endowing later Ma‘n emirate with historical legitimacy. Rather, a letter preserved in the Topkapı Palace archives shows that among the first tribal leaders to offer their fealty to Selim in and entreat him to ‘implement Islamic order and establish justice’ in the area was in fact a scion of the Shiite Harfush family of Baalbek.4 Owing to the difficulties of asserting direct control in the mountainous hinterland, the Ottomans were quick to adopt the practice of tax farming by local notables. Tax cadastres and timar appointment registers indicate that the Harfushes and other Shiite
— The Kızılbaş of Syria and Ottoman S
hiism —
notable families, such as the Sa‘bs of nearby Jabal ‘Amil, held several tax concessions throughout the sixteenth century. At the same time, the mühimme defterleri (registers of imperial chancery decrees) also make clear to what extent the Ottomans struggled to maintain order in the region and repeatedly had to send out military expeditions against unruly Druze and Shiites. These expeditions were usually presented in terms of a struggle against rebel heretics, when in fact they had nothing to do with religion or politics per se. The Harfushes themselves were denounced as ‘Revafız’ – the standard pejorative term for Twelver Shiite ‘heretics’ – after they attacked and plundered several villages in the Bekaa Valley in , but the authorities were concerned above all with the resulting loss the in taxes to rely orders on thespecifically Harfushesagainst to govern Baalbek. Around same and time,indeed one of continued the first chancery the ‘Druze and Rafızis who are not of the four [orthodox Sunni] sects’ in the province of Safad (northern Palestine and Jabal ‘Amil) was sparked by their brigandage and illegal possession of firearms, rather than by their confessional identity, which at any rate was not news to the Ottomans.5 Whatever policy against Shiism Ebussuud and others might have framed seems to have had little to no influence on actual day-to-day administration in the Syrian provinces. The degree of Ottoman reliance on local intermediaries regardless of their confessional affiliation is illustrated by the Harfushes’ recognition not only as subaşı (sergeant) or emin (commissioner) of the city of Baalbek but as local district governors as well. As early as , Musa ibn Harfush was directed to lead a force of , archers and join the Ottoman campaign to Yemen, against the Zaydi Shiite imam no less, for which he would receive the sancakbeyilik of Sidon in return. It is not clear whether this in fact occurred, but in his son ‘Ali was being referred to as emir or bey in official Ottoman correspondence and ranked in the6 provincial military hierarchy as governor of the desert sancak of Tadmur (Palmyra). By the following year ‘Ali had also been appointed sancakbeyi of Homs, and seems, somewhat unbelievably, to have offered to take over the tax farms of his main competitors, the Druze Ma‘ns of Sidon, if the whole region were reorganized and given to him as a full-blown beylerbeyilik (provincial commandership).7 Ottoman records do not indicate that he was actually made governor of Sidon, but according to the eighteenth-century traveller and historian Giovanni Mariti, the Sublime Porte did name him ‘pasha of the Druze’ and had several local chieftains deported to Istanbul specifically to prevent them from rallying to the Ma‘ns in . In reality, however, ‘Ali Harfush himself remained vulnerable. The Ottomans had taken care to disarm his supporters as well, and after being forced to retreat into the mountain stronghold of Ghazir he was easily defeated by his Druze rivals after their return from exile.8 Thus, despite its limited consequences, ‘Ali Harfush’s stint as ‘pasha’ nonetheless underlines thehinterland extent to which werecentury. entrenched in the Ottoman administration of Syria inthetheShiite later emirs sixteenth In his major biographical dictionary, the Damascene scholar al-Muhibbi (d. ) later qualified the Harfushes as ‘extremist Shiites’, with the exception of Musa Harfush, who succeeded his father after the latter’s execution in and was supposedly ‘the closest to Sunnism’.9 This has led Abdul-Rahim Abu-Husayn, whose detailed study on Ottoman provincial leaderships in Syria remains the standard in the field, to posit that the Ottomans ‘must have suspected the Harfushes, whose “extremist” commitment to Shi’ism was well known, of being in contact with the Safawids of Persia,
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with whom the Ottomans were soon to be at war again’, and that when Musa became governor of Homs in he ‘probably dissimulated Sunnism to gain favour with the Ottoman authorities, and to escape the fate of his father’.10 In fact, the chancery orders did not concern the Harfushes’ confessional identity, let alone their purported ties to Iran, but only the new ways in which they were to extract several years’ worth of back taxes from the district of Homs (though these in turn were later denounced as bidatlar, illegal innovations).11 A unique, recently published iltizam (tax farm) register from the province of Damascus in the early seventeenth century further illustrates the basis of the Ottomans’ rapport with the Shiites. Covering the years to , register a growing competition between in thethe Harfush emirs and the Druze the Ma‘n emirsdetails of Sidon for tax collection concessions Bekaa Valley, where numerous sources of revenue were earmarked for the organization of the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca. Both the Shiites and the Druze routinely attacked, denounced and outbid each other in their contest to serve, as the register puts it, this primary objective of Ottoman din ü devlet. The Harfushes were temporarily shut out of the race in , when their erstwhile partners, the janissary ocak (regiment) of Damascus, decided that the better-connected Druze might be able to produce more profits.12 THE IRANIAN CONNECTION
How did the Ottomans conceive of the Syrian Shiites’ potential link to Safavid Iran? Modern historiography on Shiism in Syria under Ottoman rule has concentrated overwhelmingly on the migration of scholars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from Jabal ‘Amil to Iran, where they helped establish Shiism as the state religion and often attained high office. Their success in Iran, as documented through their own writings and biographical dictionaries, has in turn served to highlight their marginality and supposed mistreatment back in the Ottoman empire. Salient and well-publicized events such as the execution of the legal scholar Zayn al-Din ibn ‘Ali or the dissimulation by the Safavid müctehid Baha’ al-Din al-‘Amili of his Shiite identity during a visit to his native Syria appear to provide ample evidence for this. Historians working solely within the Arabic and Persian narrative tradition have thus conditioned a very pessimistic image of Shiism under Ottoman rule, theorizing that the persecution of Shiism was ‘an official Ottoman priority’ and expressing confidence that this perception will yet be borne out by undiscovered Ottoman chronicles and mühimme documents.13 This would indeed be an interesting discovery – given not only that none of the collections of Ottoman documents cited above, nor any of the Ottoman chronicles known thus far, nor the many modern studies of heterodoxy in the Ottoman empire have up any repressive against Shiiteturned scholars, butreferences also that to theofficial, many state-coordinated references to known Syrianmeasures Shiites that do occur in the sources of this period consistently fail to connect them with the Kızılbaş question. In , for example, the Sunni muftis of Damascus accused a colleague of corruption (fesad) and heresy (rafz), but were warned to ‘guard against prejudice and zealotry’ if an investigation proved this to be untrue. In the Sublime Porte issued orders to monitor closely ‘some Rafızis from the east’ who might try to travel to Damascus and Aleppo as pilgrims or merchants and ‘mislead and corrupt some of the people of those areas who share their outlook’, but significantly did not name
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or inculpate the latter.14 During the celali rebellions, Yunus Harfush broke with his family and supported Canbulad Ali Paşa – who did actually have Safavid backing – in his attempt to seize control of Syria. However, this not only did not compromise the Harfushes’ standing as tax farmers of Baalbek, but even enabled Yunus to demand compensation for damages incurred during the revolt and subsequently to become the Ottomans’ point man in the region when the Druze emirs began to pose a greater threat. The Harfushes only appear to be mentioned in an Ottoman chronicle after being deprived of the governorship of Baalbek, in the context of the empire’s increasingly vicious fight to dislodge the Safavids from Iraq in . Following the heroic, of the valihisofsuccessor Damascusreturned with histo troops the ‘Kızılbaşdramatically swine’ nearnarrated Şehrizordeath that summer, Syriaagainst to at least rout the Harfushes and a thousand of their followers in the Bekaa – yet here again there is no linkage made between their rebelliousness and the empire’s wider struggle against a Shiite foe.15 Murad IV’s reconquest of Baghdad in eventually gave way to the longest period of peace in the history of Ottoman–Safavid relations. For commercial purposes the shahs found that there was no practical way of circumventing Aleppo and Izmir in order to reach the European market, and the trade in Iranian silk through the Ottoman empire peaked around . Politically, the two sides began a regular exchange of embassies, and the Iranians pointedly refused to support a European coalition against the Ottomans in , even helping to restore Ottoman control over Basra after a tribal rebellion there the following decade.16 It is thus noteworthy that the Ottomans began to label and prosecute Syrian Shiites as ‘Kızılbaş’ in precisely this period. In the Sublime Porte received a complaint from the religious notables of Tripoli that a family of local tax farmers, the Hamadas, was no longer content with dominating the region’s Christian- and Druze-inhabited districts but had now also begun to usurp tax farms whose population was Sunni Muslim. The authorities were evidently aware that the Hamadas were Shiites, and indeed suspected them of collaborating with the Harfushes of the Bekaa Valley, who were also being targeted by a new punitive campaign at this time. Late the next year the government denounced the Hamadas for the first time as ‘Rafızi Kızılbaş brigands’ and ordered the governors of Tripoli, Damascus and Sidon to ‘capture and punish’ the Shiite heretics ‘according to law’.17 When this did not happen, the government organized a more substantive campaign in early against ‘the Kızılbaş sect that had appeared in the Tripoli region and settled in the highlands’ and that was ‘swallowing the income legally due to the treasury of Islam’.18 In fact, the Hamadas had held some of these farms, including those inhabited mainly by Sunnis, for over forty years. Like the Harfushes, their roots appear to go back into Mamluk times, andpunitive they hadcampaign, come tothewhich attention of with the Ottoman government as early as . The ended the Hamadas’ defeat and dispersal a year later, is among the best-documented events in the history ofOttoman Shiism, recorded not only in several contemporary Arabic chronicles but also in dozens of mühimme orders sent to provincial authorities throughout Syria and Anatolia, instructing them to mobilize against the ‘Kızılbaş’ or to secure nearby port towns and desert roads against those attempting to flee. Perhaps somewhat more surprisingly, itis also described in the chronicle of Defterdar Sarı Mehmed (d. ) and, on the basis of his account, in the official history of the Ottomanvakanüvis (official historiographer) Raşid Efendi
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(d. ).19 (Neither version provides any detail beyondthat conveyed in themühimme registers, raising the question of whether Sarı Mehmed may not haveelied r simply on the then available chancery documents for his story.) Ironically, at exactly the same moment that the Sublime Porte was preparing its last great war against a ‘Kızılbaş’ rebellion, in February , an Iranian ambassador arrived in Edirne, where the Ottoman court was in residence, with a message of congratulations on Ahmed II’s accession and numerous lavish gifts from Shah Sulayman I, markinga historic high point in diplomatic relations between the two empires.20 Why are the Hamadas referred to as Kızılbaş in these sources? Although Lebanese historiography has often sought depictnomenclature Shiites in general as ethnically Iranian, there is little reason to doubt the tofamily’s and claims of descent from an Iraqi Arab tribe, and the Ottoman orders do not identify them with Anatolian Türkmen or accuse them of rebelling out of complicity with the Safavids. 21 Rather, an answer is suggested in some of the orders sent to the provincial authorities in Syria in the spring of , in which the campaign ‘to root out and extirpate’ the Shiites is characterized as being ‘in accordance with a noble fetva promulgated last year’ – i.e., around the time the Hamadas were first characterized as Kızılbaş. 22 No legal ruling specifically regarding the Hamadas has turned up in the chancery archives or in the court registers of Tripoli, and it is likely that the reference here is simply to a rehash of Ebussuud’s famous fetva , which had formed the basis for the empire’s persecution of Shiites as Kızılbaş heretics since the sixteenth century. 23 In any event, the fact that the term was first applied ad hoc in the context of a government punitive campaign suggests that it should be seen as an attempt to classify the Hamadas topically as illegal rebels rather than to fundamentally question their ethnic srcins or religious sympathies. That the categorization of the Hamadas as ‘Kızılbaş’ was above all a legal device is further suggested by the fact that this term was now consistently used also for other Shiites in the region whenever they fell foul of the state authorities. Mushrif ‘Ali alSaghir, for example, the leading Shiite lord of Jabal ‘Amil in the province of Sidon, was characterized as ‘the refuge of villainy for the Kızılbaş bandits’ after he hosted some of the Hamadas who had fled Mount Lebanon; in the government in turn gave orders to block the trails leading north so that local Shiites, ‘the Kızılbaş in the SidonBeirut mountains’, could not go to help the Hamadas in a renewed conflict with the state in Tripoli.24 In , the Hamadas were once again in trouble with the authorities and fled to take refuge ‘on land belonging to the Kızılbaş known as Ismail Harfush in Baalbek’, although the Harfush emir had just been on pilgrimage with the Syrian caravan the previous year and was not himself explicitly targeted by the order. His sons Haydar and Husayn, whose battle for control over the Baalbek district, and especially its vakıf incomes, attracted as theKızılbaş. attentionHowever, of the central over the next decades, wererepeatedly also characterized owinggovernment to their protection by the Shihabi emirs, as well as by the chief black eunuch (kızlar ağası) in Istanbul, the government was essentially powerless to remove them.25 And, finally, the death of the famous shaykh Nasif Nassar and the annihilation of his forces by Cezzar Ahmed Paşa in southern Lebanon in , which for all intents and purposes marked the end of Jabal ‘Amil’s autonomy under Ottoman rule, was also celebrated as a defeat of the ‘Kızılbaş’.26
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Homs EYALET OF TRIPOLI
Mediterranean Sea
Tripoli L MT
A EB
V Beirut
B
E
K
A
L
L
N
E
O
N
Hermel
Y
Baalbek
AA
EYALET OF SIDON Sidon
Damascus N
I
L
M
‘A Tyre
JA
B
A
L
EYALET OF DAMASCUS
Map Western Syria: eighteenth-century eyalet divisions
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THE ‘KIZILBAŞ
MU KAT AA ’
If the term ‘Kızılbaş’ was first applied to the Hamadas circumstantially in order to legitimize an unprecedented campaign of state violence, it soon began to be used as a general and increasingly meaningless pejorative label. In the eighteenth century the empire simply did not have the means or the will to follow through the political course that the official rhetoric against illegal Shiite heretics would have dictated, preferring to relinquish effective authority in the Syrian hinterland and other provinces to local or localized Ottoman ayan dynasties. In the Hamadas were reinstated in Tripoli through the good offices of the Shihabi emirs, who had just recently replaced the Ma‘ns as the premier tax farmers and overlords of the Druze community (though the Shihabis themselves were actually Sunnis and later converted to Maronitism). Ottoman fiscal records from this period quite matter of factly list the mukataas in the mountains above Tripoli as being ‘in the care of shaykh Ismail the Kızılbaş’ or as being ‘farmed, since the days of their forefathers, to someone called shaykh Isma‘il of the Kızılbaş under the guarantee of emir Haydar Shihabi ibn Ma‘n’. In the government complained that the ‘Kızılbaş faction’ owed three years’ worth of back taxes and was constantly oppressing the highland districts, but was always being reappointed nonetheless on account of the Shihabis’ intervention.27 The following year, just before the Ottomans took the opportunity presented by the Safavid dynasty’s collapse to embark on a campaign to capture Iranian territory, which would again be justified in terms of a war against irreligion, the government explicitly noted the existence of ‘the Kızılbaş mukataa annexed to the province of Tripoli and constituting a tax farm in its entirety’.28 While the Ottoman state could not countenance ideologically the existence of ‘heretical’ territory or institution, the increasingly pragmatic use of athe term to fiscal describe local administrative realities suggestscommon, that the authorities no longer had any advantage in denouncing the Syrian Shiites per se. Administrative documents from the region indicate that local Ottoman officials were also keenly aware of the limits of their authority vis-à-vis the Shiite enclave. According to the Islamic court records of Hama, the mustahfızan troops stationed in Musayliha castle on the road between Tripoli and Beirut repeatedly petitioned the imperial council to increase the stipends due to them from provincial revenues, pointing out that ‘the said castle lies on the border [hudud] with the Kızılbaş’.29 A separate entry in the court records of Tripoli concerns the appointment of a new bölükbaşı (company commander) to Musayliha, whose principal responsibility lay in ‘protecting travellers passing that spot on the road leading to Sidon and Egypt from the Kızılbaş brigands’.30 In the government forwarded a warning to the governor of Sidon that ‘the tax farmer of Jubayl, Isma‘il Hamada the Kızılbaş’, was likely to revolt and ‘cause harm to the tax farms and oppress the righteous’ as soon as the governor of Tripoli had left on the annual pilgrimage relief column. A few years later both governors were apprised that ‘the Kızılbaş shaykh’ was constantly providing bandits from the entire region with a safe haven from the law in his district. 31 None of these denunciations, however, gave rise to military action against the Shiites, nor are they linked with the statutory fetva against the Kızılbaş that would implicitly have enjoined such action. Ironically, the relative autarchy the Kızılbaş mukataa enjoyed under Ottoman rule proved in the long run also to be its undoing. By abandoning direct control over the rural hinterland, the imperial government was also paving the way for more powerful,
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better connected ayan such as the Shihabis of Sidon to invest in an increasing number of tax farms beyond their home province, to rally the local Maronite Christian community under their protection, and finally to extend their ‘emirate’ throughout the highland region that would retrospectively be defined as ‘Lebanon’.32 In , the Maronite population began a series of uprisings against the Hamadas that ended with the intervention of Yusuf Shihabi and the formal transfer of all their former landholdings by the court of Tripoli four years later. Interestingly, this entire episode seems to have escaped the notice of the Sublime Porte, with the one exception of an attack on a Christian village that was signalled to the governor of Tripoli in and in which the thugs werea large of onegroup mindofand in accord’ withunder the Harfush emirs of Baal33 In bek ‘Hamada and had ‘gathered Kızılbaş riff-raff their command’. the years following, however, the Hamadas and almost all the Shiite tribes of Mount Lebanon were driven into exile in the northern Bekaa Valley, where they are still established today. It is perhaps telling of the Ottoman imperial authorities’ general loss of control over the provincial periphery in the eighteenth century that the final elimination of the ‘Kızılbaş mukataa’ in Syria occurred virtually without their knowledge or participation. BETWEEN FOREIGN INTERFERENCE AND OTTOMAN REFORM
The extension of the Shihabi emirs’ dominance over Mount Lebanon, the Bekaa and Jabal ‘Amil and the subjection or violent displacement of the local Shiite communi34 In ties in the latenarrative eighteenth and early nineteenthhistory. centuries areOttoman covered sources, in detail on in the conventional accounts of Lebanon’s other hand, the Shiites are really only mentioned in relation to the occasional governor rebellions and military irruptions that were beginning to undermine Ottoman sovereignty in the region. But since their only consistent aim in this time of profound change was to continue and try to secure some measure of autonomy vis-à-vis more powerful actors, the Kızılbaş now begin to appear, depending on the context, as either enemies or allies of the state. The Shiites’ occupation of Sidon in in support of the major wartime rebellion of Egypt’s Muhammad Abu’l-Dhahab and Zahir al‘Umar of Acre occurred at perhaps the nadir of Ottoman imperial power and does not seem to be noted in any chancery sources; the description of their victory over the governor of Damascus and the Shihabi emirs given in Ahmed Cevdet’s history appears, much like his overall summary of politics in ‘Mount Lebanon’, to be based entirely on local Christian sources.35 The situation was different in , when another invasion from Egypt – that
of Napoleon inBonaparte’s forcesreceived – was halted at Acre by Cezzar government Istanbul early intelligence reports from Ahmed the areaPaşa. that The ‘the Druze have until now not leaned toward or followed the infidels. Though some of the Kızılbaş were inclined toward the wretched unbelievers, having witnessed their defeat and weakness they have also regretted this and given up on them’.36 However, orders given later in the summer are unequivocal in their condemnation of the Shiites and offer insight into Ottoman attitudes towards the non-orthodox subject population at this juncture. Noting that, initially, ‘the Revafız were established on the lands of
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my noble state, ploughing and planting and earning their livelihoods in various ways, and were thus beneficial and sided with the exalted state’, the document then accuses them of having provided aid and supplies to the French; for their ‘treason and base ingratitude’ they were now ‘to be reckoned among the enemy’. In an echo of Ebussuud’s still valid ruling, their blood is declared to be licit and ‘their goods and livestock to be plundered according to law and their women and children enslaved’. Yet it is noteworthy that the orders in this case did not use the religious-legally charged term ‘Kızılbaş’, possibly because the equally heretical Druze were again being held up as models of obedience and loyalty toward the state.37 the correspondence next years the Shiites other groups were often invoked in Over chancery only inand terms of heterodox their perceived political reliability. In Cezzar Ahmed, who had temporarily fallen from official favour, undertook to tarnish his rival Abdallah Paşa of the ‘Azm family as an ally of the Druze, Kızılbaş and Nusayris and was eventually rewarded by being reappointed to the governorship of Damascus. 38 Cezzar’s successor, Süleyman Paşa ‘the Just’, made a point of reconciling with the Shiites in order to demarcate himself from his predecessor, ‘the Butcher’, and in another Abd allah Paşa of Sidon reinstated Nasif Nassar’s son Faris and other shaykhs in their traditional tax fiefs in Jabal ‘Amil to win their support in his bid to seize the governorship of Damascus by force. The defending vali of Damascus, Derviş Paşa, as well as other local offic ials, reported with alarm that the ‘Druze, Nusayri and Kızılbaş factions’ had joined the rebellion, with the ‘Kızılbaş army’ even threatening the hajj route near Homs, but since ‘subduing them through warfare is futile’, and as some Druze clans had already been won over, the vali suggested ‘sparing neither money nor presents’ to conciliate the other groups ‘and pull them over little by little’ to the Damascene side. 39 Just like the Druze, however, the local ‘Kızılbaş’ did not have a single, clear-cut position during the rebellion anyway. Only the previous year the Shiites of Mount Lebanon (Tripoli) had backed their Maronite neighbours in an ‘ammiye (popular uprising) against Abdallah Paşa and his ally the Druze emir; in late June, meanwhile, Derviş Paşa could note w ith satisfaction that emirs Husayn and Salman Harfush, certainly the most powerful Shiite figures in the region (though they are tellingly not identified as such), had agreed to join the Ottoman cause. 40 These documents appear to be the last that refer to the Shiites in Syria (or anywhere else in the empire) as Kızılbaş. The final Egyptian invasion by Ibrahim Paşa ten years later, in , heralded a new epoch, especially for non-Muslim and heterodox populations, by extending them at least a theoretical legal equality and generally transforming the relationship between the modernizing state and the individual social and economic subject. However, whereas the Shiites had welcomed previous governor rebellions precisely as a means to decision reinforcetotheir Ibrahim intrusive, centralizing reforms and his allyown withautonomy, Bashir Shihabi nowPaşa’s only engendered opposition on their part. As early as the leading Harfush emirs, as well as members of the Hamada family, were in contact with the Ottoman expeditionary commander Mehmed Reşid Paşa to coordinate the resistance against the Egyptians.41 Despite efforts by some members of the Harfush family to collaborate with Ibrahim Paşa in order to retain control of Baalbek, by the Shiites as a whole were playing a leading part in the uprising that would break his grip on the coastal highlands and help return the region to Ottoman rule.42
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In the following years, Ottoman rule consisted for the most part in the futile search for a power-sharing agreement between the Maronite and Druze communities of Lebanon that would be agreeable to their respective French and British backers. In , foreign minister Şekib Efendi appointed a twelve-member meclis (council) to serve each of the two semi-autonomous kaim-makamiyes (district deputyships) that had been established under European auspices (but which were in fact similar to the consultative councils being introduced in other provinces). These summarize well the Shiites’ ambiguous status in the reform era: while each of the six locally dominant sects could name both a judge (kadi) and a counsellor to the meclis, the Shiites had to be represented by a Sunnimeanwhile, judge as thereturned state didtonot recognizetheanyBekaa Shiiteafter judicial authority.43 The Harfushes, dominate the Shihabi emirate’s demise but were now confronted by France’s ever more ardent defence of the Christian community’s interests. Ottoman foreign ministry papers, for instance, detail the komisyon called in – to investigate Salman Harfush’s various transgressions against the French protégé Yusuf Juday and others, some of which already dated back almost a decade.44 Banished initially to Crete, the Harfush emirs were permitted to return to Syria in after humbly petitioning the sultanate, in a letter harking back to earlier notions of personal loyalty and patronage, to consider ‘their separation from their homeland and their longing for their sons and families after so many years’. 45 While the Shiites then largely stayed aloof from the sectarian violence between Christians and Druze later that year, Salman Harfush was declared an outlaw when he sided with the Yusuf Beğ Karam insurrection and died captive in Damascus a few years later.46 The rest of the family was banished to Edirne in ; the last trace of the Harfushes in Ottoman documentation concerns their appointment to various sinecures in the civil bureaucracy in Istanbul towards the end of the century.47 CONCLUSION
The ‘Kızılbaş’ of Syria add to our understanding of Ottoman Shiism in that they give a name and a face to a phenomenon which is almost totally anonymous elsewhere in the empire. First used in Ottoman chronicles and chancery documents of the sixteenth century to denote an ill-defined but clearly problematic tribal-cum-religious movement spreading out from Anatolia, the application of the term to the Hamadas, Harfushes and other already well-known Twelver Shiite notables of Lebanon casts a different light on the Ottomans’ perception of heterodoxy. After the conquest in , these families were often co-opted into the Ottoman provincial administration, as mukataacıs or even as governors of secondary sancaks such as Tadmur and Homs, with fiscal and police responsibilities a vast section of the Syrian coastalEbussuud’s highlands. Between and the Sublimeover Porte occasionally chose to invoke fetva and castigate them as Kızılbaş heretics over more mundane offences such as tax evasion and brigandage, but even these documents make clear that the authorities saw them neither as connected with the Anatolian tribes nor as supporters of Iran. In the eighteenth century the central state acquiesced in the near autonomy of the coastal hinterland under the rule of local notable dynasties, still regardless of their confessional affiliation, and began to use the term ‘Kızılbaş’ less as a call to arms or a legal justification for killing Shiites than as a mildly derogatory ethnographic identifier.
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The changing paradigms of Ottoman provincial administration – the monetarization and privatization of government office beginning in the sixteenth century, the devolution of power to local or localized ayan, and finally the attempt at centralizing reforms in the nineteenth century – thus probably provide a better framework for understanding the fate of Syria’s Shiites than the question of religious orientation or persecution. For much of the Ottoman period, these Kızılbaş, the inevitable occasions of violence between tribalists and government agents notwithstanding, were fully integrated in the state administrative system in the region. Their marginalization in the modern era at the hands of local competitors acting in concert with European imperial interests, being peculiar to theirassituation expressivefar of from the empire’s development a whole. as Shiites, might in turn be seen as NOTES * I am grateful to Sylvain Cornac for his help in procuring documents and to the participants of the Great Lakes Ottomanist Workshop (GLOW) in Montréal for their feedback and suggestions. Hinz : –; Mélikoff : ; Veinstein b. Ahmet Refik ; Öz ; Savaş ; Şener ; Şener and Hezarfen . See Imber ; Zarinebaf-Shahr . Akgündüz –: IV, ; on the Druze emirs, see Salibi , . BOA, Mühimme Defterleri [MD], : (#); MD : (#); MD : (#). BOA, MD : (#); MD : (#); MD : (#). BOA, MD : (#); MD : (#). Cited in Worbs : –. Abu-Husayn al-Muhibbi (n.d.): . : IV, –. BOA, MD : (#); MD : (#); MD : (#); MD : (#); MD : (#); MD : (#). Nagata et al. : esp. , –, , ; analysed in more detail in Winter : –. Stewart . BOA, MD : (#); MD : (#); MD : (#). Naima : II, –. Faroqhi : –; Longrigg : , , . BOA, MD : (#, ); MD : (#); MD : (#); MD : (#); MD :– (#, ). BOA, MD : (#, ); see also BOA, Ali Emiri, II., Ahmed . Sarı Mehmed Paşa : –, –; Raşid Mehmed Efendi –: II, –, –. Winter : –. al-Amin : II, ; cf. Abu-Husayn : ; Abu-Husayn : –, . BOA, MD : (#); MD : (#) and MD : (#) (identical); MD :– (#). Ebussuud Efendi : –; Imber a: , , –. BOA, MD : (#); MD : (#); MD : (#); MD : (#). BOA, MD : (#); MD :– (#); BOA, Cevdet Evkaf . BOA, MD :– (#); Cevdet Paşa –: III, –. BOA, Maliyeden Müdevver :; :; MD :– (#–). BOA, MD : (#); on the Azerbayjan campaign, see Longrigg : –.
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Damascus, Markaz al-Watha’iq al-Tarikhiyya, Hama Islamic Court Records : (#), : (#). Tripoli, Qasr Nawfal, Islamic Court Register :. BOA, MD : (#); MD : (#); Cevdet Dahiliye . Winter : –, –. BOA, MD :– (#); Tripoli, Islamic Court Register :–. al-Zayn ; Abi Haidar : , –; Hamada : I, –, –; II, –. Cevdet Paşa –: I, –, , ; cf. Abu-Husayn . BOA, Hatt-ı Hümayun (HH) . BOA, Cevdet Dahiliye . BOA, HH i; see also HH . BOA, HH a-b, HH , HH . BOA, HH . Rustum –: II, (#), (#), (#). Ibid.: IV, (#), (#), (#), – (#), – (#), (#). Havemann : , –, ; Farah : . BOA, Hariciye Mektubi Kalemi /; Hariciye Nezareti Tercüman Odası /. BOA, Divan (Beylikçi) Kalemi /. Kerr : , –; BOA, İrade Dahiliye . BOA, Cevdet Dahiliye ; Dahiliye Mektubi Kalemi /, /, /.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE REIGN OF VIOLENCE The celalis c.–
Oktay Özel
M
odern historiography depicts Ottoman history in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as a period of crisis, generally associated with the celali rebellions which occurred primarily in Anatolia and, to a lesser extent, northern Syria. 1 Discussion of celali causes has centred largely around sixteenth-century politicalfiscal and economic-demographic developments. Recently added to the argument has been the agency problem of the predatory state, the nature of the overall transformation that the empire and society experienced in parallel with the celali movements throughout the seventeenth century, and climatic changes. The present essay reassesses the issue in the light of new findings based on recently explored sources. It examines internal demographic, economic and political dynamics and conditions, as well as conjunctural factors in the s which led marginalized groups within rural society, primarily the peasant masses, into a violent reaction in the form of banditry and rebellion. A reconstruction of the historical context and causes is followed by discussion of the destructive character of the celali movements and its consequences in Anatolia, and of the nature of this violence as a phenomenon within Ottoman social history. The central argument of the essay is that the political-level analysis of the celalis falls far short in understanding both the peculiarities of the historical process which prepared the ground for the celali movements and the extent of destructive violence throughout the seventeenth century. Banditry and occasional rebellions continued, transforming rural society, the economy and the ecological environment as well as leaving a legacy of institutionalized violence which became an inherent characteristic of later Ottoman Anatolian society. CONTEXT AND CAUSES Financial crisis and the military institutions
The late s and early s were critical years for the Ottoman fiscal administration. Rising prices, increasing war expenditure, failure in the flow of tax revenue to the central treasury, and consequent difficulties in payment of salaries to thousands
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of kapıkulus, both the imperial guards and the standing army, infantry and cavalry, placed great pressure on the Ottoman treasury. The pragmatic solution to this crisis was devaluation and debasement of the currency: between and the Ottoman akçe was devalued by per cent and its silver content reduced by per cent. 2 Another attempted devaluation in and inability to pay full salaries in the new currency provoked revolt among the imperial cavalry in Istanbul, appeased only by the execution of the chief treasurer and the vezir held responsible. During a similar revolt in , the grand vezir was sacked and the treasurer saved only with difficulty. 3 Fiscal concerns had become the government’s chief priority. 4 Debasement had been common from the large time of Mehmed II (–). Such a fierce reaction in was practice due partly to the increase in the number of salaried kuls during the third quarter of the sixteenth century, and partly to a growing sense of marginalization among Istanbul-based troops.5 While regular recruitment of Christian boys through the devşirme continued, numbers had increased also through recruitment of local Muslim peasants, particularly during periods of border warfare and princely succession struggles. Peasant recruits who had subsequently been given status and payment as kapıkulu soldiers were considered outsiders (ecnebi) by the Istanbul-based kapıkulu troops and their incorporation as violation of an established rule.6 Moreover, during the long wars against Iran (– and early s) and Habsburg Hungary (–), the position of the kapıkulu soldiers deteriorated as the financial crisis deepened. Salaries, even if paid on time, had drastically lost value and purchasing power as a result of debasements and rising prices. 7 Contemporary sources also mention increasing distrust on the part of these soldiers towards the pashas and vezirs under whom they fought, due to unpaid salaries and unkept promises or to their incompetence, insults and abuse of power.8 Kapıkulu troops may also have considered themselves the losers within a climate of ‘selective promotion’ which had begun to affect all categories of the imperial elite.9 Stationed in Istanbul, they were among the first to observe how high positions and lucrative revenue holdings were sold through advance payments (often seen as ‘bribery’ by contemporary observers) rather than given on merit. By the s, sale of office had become established practice as all governorships were given to senior military administrators in return for advance payment in gold to the treasury and to grand vezirs.10 Rank-and-file kuls witnessed their hopes for higher positions gradually fade away. Increasingly vulnerable to fluctuations in fiscal and military administration, they began to react more violently to deteriorating conditions. Istanbul kapıkulu troops were not the only ones affected by the crisis. From the midsixteenth century, thousands of middle- and lower-ranking provincial cavalry – timarlı sipahis financed by revenue-holdings (dirlik) in return for military service – also began sipahi system. to react11toThe similar financial class had and srcinally administrative been composed changeslargely in the of Ottoman local elements, redistributive most of whom had connections with landed and/or military aristocracy from pre-Ottoman times. From the mid-fifteenth century onwards, they were incorporated more closely into the Ottoman timar system as fief-holding soldiers, gradually losing previous privileges as their dirliks shrank in size and lost value.12 Over time they were increasingly replaced by timariots of devşirme-kul srcin, 13 and in both cases, during the sixteenth century, there was a tendency towards smaller, less valuable fiefs. 14 By mid-century there was a growing pool of disaffected sipahis, particularly in Anatolia.
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Inflation and debasement of the currency probably had negative effects on the sipahis too, in addition to natural fluctuations in revenue income on account of climate changes and unpredictable harvests. The more their fixed-income dirlik lost value, the more difficult it was to equip themselves and their mounted soldiers ( cebeli) for military campaigns, particularly during the thirty-year period of regular campaigns from onwards.15 By that year, many had already begun to squeeze their revenue sources, the taxpaying peasantry, by extracting illegal payments and food, and were drifting into lawlessness and de facto banditry. By a significant proportion of remaining fief-holders simply could not afford to attend military expeditions on their 16
diminishing resources; many soughtoftoreactionary evade military duty. among provincial sipahis The most serious manifestations discontent occurred from the last quarter of the fifteenth century to the s, through their direct involvement in the political crises caused by struggles for the throne among competing princes: between Selim [I] and Ahmed (and his son Murad, –), and between Bayezid and Selim [II] (–). 17 The former coincided with the most violent phase of Ottoman–Safavid rivalry and its offspring, the kızılbaş revolts, which lasted until and created havoc in Anatolia. A certain proportion of the sipahi class clearly participated actively in these revolts, either for religious-spiritual motives through sympathy for the Safavid cause or due to deterioration in their financial and military/political status.18 In addition, from the s onwards, the imperial administration gradually increased the number of soldiers with firearms, which further undermined the position of the sipahi cavalry as a whole.19 Hence, during the Bayezid–Selim rivalry in the s there was a significant number of disaffected sipahis in the countryside who hoped to restore their fiefs or to better their condition, and to whom the competing princes appealed for support.20 As argued srcinally by Akdağ, the celali rebellions of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were closely related to the general financial crisis and the transformation of the kapıkulu and sipahi institutions. By the s, not only sipahis in Anatolia but also kapıkulus everywhere were participating in unlawful activities and violent reactions. The same soldiers’ increasingly undisciplined behaviour and uncontrollable desire to gather as much war booty and spoils as possible during campaigns and regular frontier raids fits into this picture.21 Oppression and demo-economic factors
The ordinary subjects of the empire ( reaya), particularly the peasantry, were the primary victims of maladministration, financial crisis and over-taxation, and of extortion by agents of the imperial administration, mostly the kuls and sipahis.22 Economic and demographic also contributed greatly (totahrir the )deteriorating of the peasantry. Thefactors empire-wide survey registers indicate an conditions almost linear trend of growth in the sixteenth-century taxpaying population and agrarian economy. The population growth rate varied between regions, but often exceeded per cent. Both rural and urban settlements expanded, as did agricultural production. 23 Arable lands were extended to the limits, particularly in areas with fertile soil; new villages emerged, some developing rapidly into towns. There was also a clear trend towards sedentary life among semi-nomadic elements in regions such as Bozok and Kayseri.24
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However, economic and demographic expansion brought its own problems. Repeated fragmentation of peasant farmsteads (çiftliks) produced a ‘surplus’ population with minimal plots of land to cultivate, or none at all. By the s the number of landless peasants exceeded the number of households who still held some plots of land, however small in size.25 Another critical and related development was a sharp increase in the number of unmarried adult males. Although the gross agricultural product expanded in parallel with the expansion of agricultural land, this was ultimately limited, and the growth of population far exceeded the increase in arable land. Two significant problems arose: demographic pressure, particularly in densely settled areas per capita of fertile land in Anatolia, and a decrease production, which produced 26 These a serious subsistence crisis during the thirdinquarter of the sixteenth century. factors combined to push a large proportion of the most dynamic peasant groups out of their villages, to migrate and seek livelihoods elsewhere.27 However, signs of demographic pressure and subsistence crisis were present throughout the empire’s rural areas. The crucial question is why the celali movements as such, with chronic waves of big rebellions of large armies, took place only in Anatolia and northern Syria, and not elsewhere. The Balkan provinces were plagued by lowlevel banditry and highway robbery.28 In the Arab provinces, including North Africa, tribal banditry was chronic and there were frequent regional rebellions with their own characteristics. However, neither the Balkans nor the Arab provinces experienced a celali-type phenomenon. Probable answers lie in three principal semi-structural characteristics of Anatolia under Ottoman rule. First is the existence of a large, uncontrollable Turkish/Türkmen population, particularly in the Karaman, İç-il and Zulkardiye provinces, as well as western Taurus regions of Anadolu province, whose socio-political characteristics were shaped by the tension between the lifestyle of dynamic, mobile semi-nomadic tribes and the centralizing policies of the state.29 Likewise, in south-eastern Anatolia and northern Syria, the chief problem for the central administration was the Kurdish and Arab tribes who were routinely active in highway robbery, raiding and rampage.30 Second is a ‘culture of popular dissent’ associated with messianic ideology and a tradition of extreme self-sacrificing zeal, evident from the Babai revolts of the s, through the popular-messianic rebellion of Şeyh Bedreddin in the s, to the early sixteenth-century kızılbaş era.31 This helped fuel resistance to the centralizing state. 32 Third is the unique source of chronic socio-political instability created by the practice of ‘prince-governorships’, in Anatolian provinces only, and the Ottoman system of competitive succession to the throne. Dating from the long period of civil strife after Bayezid I’s defeat at Ankara in , the periodic attempts of rival princes to gain the support of notables and the ordinary population in their respective localities destroyed
thediscontent. precarious social balance, undermined class barriers and further popular Resistance to imperial centralizing policies among theexacerbated most mobile and economically deprived segments of the reaya, peasants as well as the semi-nomadic Türkmen and Kurdish elements, increased during the dynastic struggles of – and especially –.33 In the latter period such men were recruited en masse as soldiers in the warring camps and offered either sipahi fiefs or kapıkulu rank. As the mainstay of the rival princely armies, they became further politicized. In this context, Arıcanlı and Kafadar suggest that Süleyman’s sons may be considered the ‘first celali leaders’.34
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From another angle, Yunus Koç emphasizes the diminishing capacity of the state to absorb the most mobile, dynamic elements of the lower echelons of society by offering them opportunities for upward mobility and status change.35 This had particular relevance in Anatolia, where ever-increasing numbers of young peasants who filled the medrese lodges as students graduated with no prospect of employment in the Ottoman religious and bureaucratic establishments and resorted to low-profile almstaking by wandering in their localities. This soon deteriorated into chronic banditry, with student (suhte) bands active in both rural and urban areas until the early seventeenth century.36 Further, those levend mercenaries recruited by rival princes in the s who subsequently failed37toEarly obtain fiefsreign or kapıkulu formed brigand bands, often equipped with firearms. in the of Selimrank II (–), there already existed a sizeable, dangerously mobile rural population in the Anatolian countryside, active in low-level but chronic brigandage. The explosion c.–
The number of soldier-brigands with firearms increased during the s and s as provincial governors formed their own retinues by employing these same people, the uprooted peasants, as sekban and sarıca mercenaries. Contemporary sources indicate that such a trend then accelerated, encouraging more and more peasants to leave their homes to join such retinues.38 This fatal combination – the sultan’s provincial agents and their sekban retinues – furthered acts of oppression targeting primarily the remaining taxpaying villagers. Akdağ estimates that in the s there were some hundreds of thousands of levendat and sekbans active in celali bands, either independently or in the retinues of provincial governors. 39 The general situation of provincial governors themselves also deteriorated rapidly, due to the high cost of obtaining and maintaining office.40 The resentment of increasingly marginalized members of the askeri resulted in acts of rebellion in the capital and increasing lawlessness in the provinces.41 Special sultanic decrees (termed by historians adaletnames, ‘justice decrees’) reminded governors of their primary duty to observe justice and avoid illegal acts of all kinds.42 In practice, however, the breakdown in authority was a much more complex phenomenon that cut across all sectors of society, from the palace, through all levels of administrative officials, down to sekbans of reaya srcin. The long wars of the late sixteenth century had imposed extra burdens on the rural population and economy. That of – against Iran proved especially detrimental on account of the war-time obligations upon both peasants and nomads of extra taxes, labour and animals in provisioning large armies both on campaign and in winter 43 Theand quarters. foragainst the Hungarian –, in the treasearly s forExactions the ‘celalicontinued campaigns’ the rebelswar in of Anatolia. imperial ury attempted to overcome the cash shortage not only by debasing the currency, but also by regularizing extraordinary levies, the avarız and tekalif,44 and by multiplying the rate of these taxes and services in kind as well as the poll tax (cizye) paid by nonMuslim subjects. In response, the taxpaying reaya began to resist these exactions by arming themselves against the tax-collecting agents of provincial governors and other officials. Meanwhile, the kapıkulus of İstanbul as well as provincial sipahis also began to evade military campaigns in ever-increasing numbers.45 The result was dangerous
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militarization of the countryside, with highly mobile and discontented elements at all social levels. Furthermore, Sam White draws attention to extraordinary climatic fluctuations which coincided with these developments as a serious ‘external pressure’ on the peasantry. To him, the years of drought and famine played a crucial role in the rise of violence and banditry during the last decade of the century.46 Andıç and Andıç see this development as the consequence of a system of ‘predatory finance’ which aimed to maximize revenue for the imperial treasury and the individual wealth of grandees by creating highly politicized kinship networks that made arbitrary use of the opportunities amply provided for them by the imperial system. 47 The result was the exclusion of certain sections oforthe agentsfavours, – i.e., the class – from the redistribution mechanism of privileges political andaskeri of the taxpaying subjects from the imperial system of welfare and prosperity, eventually pushing them all into the margins of the law. Cook refines the agency problem further by drawing attention to the same institutional elasticity of the Ottoman ruling elite that left its agents considerable room for manoeuvre in order to maintain themselves in the zone between the sultanate and its subjects, without any overwhelming interest in the preservation of the prevailing social structure either in Ottoman Anatolia or elsewhere. 48 Theoretically, they functioned as the instrument of Ottoman ‘centralization’, but in practice they acted quite independently with the means (both military and economic) to reproduce themselves. They did this not necessarily by preserving such basic institutions as the timar, but rather by adapting themselves to changing conditions pragmatically and often at high cost even for themselves. Here, one should note that lowerranking members of the Ottoman ruling elite such as timariots and kapıkulu soldiers were not part of the emerging elites, or of the empire’s ‘sub-state structure’, as Andıç and Andıç define them. On the contrary, along with the reaya, they were at the losing end of the gradual institutional dissolution and deeper imperial transformation beginning in the later sixteenth century. THE
CELALI
S: BANDITRY AND REBELLIONS
Contemporary sources point unanimously to the crucial impact of the Hungarian campaign on the escalation of violence and devastation in the Ottoman countryside. Although victorious at Haçova, the Ottoman army struggled on the battlefield and lost substantial numbers of men. Many more fled and disappeared, leaving the sultan and the commanding vezirs in a state of shock. A summary roll-call revealed that thousands of Janissaries had deserted and that, according to contemporary sources, some , sipahi provincial cavalry had evaded the campaign altogether, while others had sent substitutes. Punishment was severe: both deserters and those who had failed to appear to beThousands persecutedofwherever ands all ranks, andtheincome sources were revoked. Janissariescaught, and sipahi aretheir said to have fiefs fled to ‘other side’ (öte yaka) – i.e., Anatolia. Most became involved in large-scale banditry, often forming their own bands from the levends and sekbans already active in the countryside.49 This finally brought home to the imperial administration the seriousness of the celali movements in Anatolia.50 In , two years after the Haçova campaign, and coinciding with a major earthquake in Anatolia, came the first great celali rebellion, which set the precedent for others throughout the seventeenth century. Contemporary sources mention for the
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first time a ‘rebellious’ pasha, Hüseyin Paşa, the governor of Karaman, in association with Karayazıcı Abdülhalim, a former police chief and head of a sekban division in Sivas province, who rebelled in the same year with a local force of some , men and declared himself ruler of the Urfa region. Karayazıcı’s army defeated the Ottoman forces sent against him, and roamed the countryside of north-central Anatolia for four years with such success that the imperial administration sought to buy him off with the governorate of Çorum. When he died in , Karayazıcı had an army of , men under his command.51 Paradoxically, the Ottoman forces sent against him were themselves composed partially of former celalis and levends, and also behaved like celalis in the Anatolian villages andthe causing great and distress to-like the peasantry. Karayazıcı hadcountryside, complainedruining to Istanbul about oppressive behaviour celali of the Ottoman commander, a point raised again by Nasuh Paşa in . 52 After Karayazıcı’s death, his brother Deli Hasan continued to devastate Anatolia to such a degree that the government attempted to conciliate him with the governorship of Temeşvar in the western Balkans. Moving with his men to Rumeli, he subsequently fought with the Ottoman army in Hungary. The most serious rebellion led by an Ottoman pasha was that of Canbulatoğlu Ali Paşa, governor of Aleppo. Canbulatoğlu’s rebellion had a significant local character closely linked to his family’s near hereditary rule north of Aleppo and to a struggle for regional autonomy; it was therefore particularly important for the Ottoman administration to win him over, again by conciliation.53 Although Ali Paşa was executed in , various members of the Canbulatoğlu family continued to hold high positions in Ottoman service. 54 Kalenderoğlu and other rebel pashas in this period – in Sivas, Kayseri, Ayntab and Aydın – commanded armies of , to , men, mostly levends and sekbans.55 The greatest celali armies were led by leaders of sekban srcin, with between , and , men under their command. Most of these rebellions took place simultaneously in different parts of Anatolia between and and easily defeated the government forces (also composed largely of Anatolian levends) sent against them.56 At the peak of this devastation and anarchy came ‘the great flight’ of peasants from the land (büyük kaçgun, –).57 Some tried to defend themselves by building fortified towns (palankas); most sought refuge in already fortified local cities or fled to Istanbul, Rumeli, Syria or even Crimea.58 The government response, between and , was relatively successful in asserting control; according to one contemporary source, around , celalis had been killed by . 59 However, this was only a temporary and partial success. Brigandage by celali bands, in small or large numbers, and the unlawful activities of provincial officials continued. The second phase of the celali rebellions broke out in , with the revolt of Abaza Mehmed Paşa, governor of Erzurum and formerly the treasurer of Canbulatoğlu Ali 60
Paşa. Mehmet aim wasWith revenge for the deposition andmostly assassination by Janissaries of Paşa’s Osmandeclared II (–). , of his own men, sekbans recruited from local Turks, Kurds and Türkmen, as well as sipahis, and with support from many Anatolian provincial governors, he laid siege to Ankara with a force of ,. He was pardoned twice, in and , and, by analogy with the treatment of previous celali rebels, was appointed to governorships in the Balkans before eventually being executed in .61 Abaza Mehmed Paşa’s revolt was followed by the local rebellions of Cennetoğlu around Manisa (s), İlyas Paşa (governor of Anatolia) around Balıkesir to Manisa and Midilli, the Türkmen clan chief Boynuinceli
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Hacı Ahmedoğlu Ömer around Kayseri (all s), and Gürcü Abdünnebi, Karahaydaroğlu and Katırcıoğlu around Kütahya and Isparta (s). After the shortlived counter terror of Murad IV (–) came another period of disorder in the imperial administration and provinces, and in a further phase of rebellion led by Abaza Hasan Paşa, a former member of the imperial cavalry, whose eight-year revolt destabilized the Anatolian countryside from Kayseri to Aleppo.62 In this rebellion also, the rebel pasha aimed to intervene in Istanbul factional politics, supporting the vezir İbşir Mustafa Paşa, who was of Türkmen srcin and a nephew of Abaza Mehmed Paşa.63 These later rebellions partially coincided with and were exacerbated by the lengthy war with came Venice Crete from to . s again toover prominence in Anatolia, this time providing the manpower Sekban 64 to challenge the sipahis and Janissaries. They remained significant in other local activities of rebellious seventeenth-century pashas, finally and most seriously during the Hungarian war of – against Austrian-led coalition armies following the Ottoman defeat at Vienna. Violence again erupted in Anatolia, comparable to that at the beginning of the century. The last celali leader of note was Yeğen Osman Bölükbaşı (later Paşa), who between and led thousands of sekbans and freefloating levends. Similar to earlier rebel pashas, he was first made governor of Rumeli, then commander-in-chief of the Ottoman armies against Austria; while in power he appointed his men to governorships in Anatolian provinces but was executed after a failed attempt to become grand vezir.65 Disorder reigned in Anatolia for the duration of the Austrian war, military expenditure produced a major financial crisis in Istanbul and kul revolts, and the taxation system was overhauled to meet the urgent need for cash. When peace was agreed at Karlowitz in , the general picture of internal chaos and disorder, as well as the violence and financial crisis, were strikingly similar to the conditions of the late sixteenth century, and to the situation in when the treaty of Zsitvatörok concluded the earlier ‘long war’ in Hungary. THE CONSEQUENCES: DESTRUCTION, DEPOPULATION, AND TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY AND ECONOMY
Mustafa Akdağ’s seminal work on the celali movements was carried out from the s to the s. Recent research, with access to a greater variety of sources, confirms that it was a much longer-lasting phenomenon, causing far greater damage, than has been generally known. Violence became the underlying characteristic at all levels of seventeenth-century politics and society, both in the provinces and in Istanbul. It brought about changes in the imperial structure, either dissolution and breakdown (as in the timar and social order) or gradual change and transformation (as in the kapıkulu and household/patronage networks, and in the wider application of tax farming). It also produced a profound transformation in Anatolian economy and society. The number of those involved in the celali movements in general is unknown, though scattered archival and chronicle evidence suggests that, in the first decade of the seventeenth century, it was between , and ,. 66 The mass abandonment of rural settlements, particularly during the ‘great flight’ of –, left half-ruined, drastically depopulated villages and towns.67 As administrative records of the period
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clearly attest, large tracts of arable lands left uncultivated for years were often acquired by members of the local askeri class. Years of famine often followed, which combined with attempts to enforce as much tax collection as possible, furthered the desertion of villages and drove large numbers of people into hunger, death or banditry. 68 Rural violence meant the disappearance, temporarily or permanently, of a great number of Anatolian rural settlements and caused also major destruction in some cities targeted by the celalis. Rhetorical dramatization of the celali phenomenon in early seventeenth-century advice literature was not simply exaggeration for effect. 69 We can now consult detailed telhis) between correspondence grand vezirs sultans from the turn of the seventeenth century; (mühimme and ahkam series and of outgoing imperial orders, including fiscal concerns; registers of the kadi courts; and the annual account books of the great evkaf or pious endowments.70 Narrative sources have been re-evaluated and subjected to closer textual and contextual readings.71 These all provide further evidence of the extent and complexity of the movement. Most significant among these new sources are the seventeenth-century avarız and cizye tax registers,72 which allow comparison with preceding tahrir surveys and make it possible to observe changes in the taxpaying population, in settlement patterns and in the composition of both rural and urban Anatolian society.73 Between the s and s, a period which includes the most violent phase of the celali terror and the greatest rebellions, the rural taxpaying population in central, northcentral and eastern Anatolian provinces such as Konya, Bozok, Amasya, Canik, Tokat, Harput and Erzurum fled to safer areas, either high mountains or urban settlements with better protection.74 Akdağ gives dramatic examples from the Ankara region, where official reports show that, in in the district of Bacı, thirty-three out of thirty-eight villages were totally depopulated, while in the two districts of Haymana over eighty villages, once amounting to two-thirds of the rural population, had no inhabitants left. Similarly, in the Afyon region south-west of Ankara, officials found peasants in only ten villages.75 Günhan Börekçi has recently drawn attention to the existence of similar reports for western Anatolian districts.76 In the Ayntab region, immigration into the city from its rural surroundings early in the century was followed in the s by peasant flight and abandoned villages, due most probably to Abaza Hasan Paşa’s rebellion.77 Katip Çelebi, who visited Anatolia in the twelve years prior to , emphasizes partic78 Simeon ularly the large number of refugees flowing into cities, especially to Istanbul. of Poland, who traversed Anatolia in the aftermath of the ‘great flight’, observed a similar picture, noting especially that half of the western Anatolian city of Bursa had been destroyed, burned and depopulated by the celalis; the situation was similar for Kayseri and Ankara.79 Evliya Çelebi confirms similar destruction elsewhere in Anatolia 80
in mid-century. Even thevillages Englishformerly ambassador Istanbul, commenting the, s, states that, out of , in thetoentire empire (in ),inonly were left inhabited in .81 This statement, allegedly based on two surveys, though perhaps grossly exaggerated, conveys a sense of the contemporary perception of the 82 degree of destruction and desolation of the Anatolian countryside. The tax registers of the s also show a dramatic drop in recorded population in both urban and rural settlements. In Bozok and Harput in the province of Rum, the number of rural taxpayers was barely per cent of that recorded in pre- celali registers: some to per cent of the rural population had disappeared from the tax
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surveys.83 In Manyas, the avarız register of – refers to the depopulation of some quarters of the town as a result of the attacks by the ‘celali bandits’.84 It seems that no significant recovery was observed in the depopulated villages during the rest of the century, despite sporadic references to some peasants returning to their villages after ten, twenty or even thirty years, usually to find their lands occupied either by askeris or by peasant refugees from other worse-affected regions. 85 Rare examples of similar registers from the late seventeenth century suggest that the situation was no better in the s. The population of the city of Lazikıyye (Denizli), for example, decreased even further (by . per cent) between and .86 Systematic comparison of avarız/cizye registers shows significant change in settlement patterns. Some toand tahrir per cent of pre-also ruralasettlements celali (villages and cultivated fields, mezraas) were by the s totally ruined; some disappeared for good. The majority of deserted settlements were in the open plains, as was the case in Amasya.87 This confirms Hütteroth’s findings for the inner Anatolian plateau, namely the province of Karaman: here the rate of abandonment in mountain villages was to per cent but in the open plains was around per cent.88 A closer examination of settlements in the Amasya region shows that the abandoned villages included almost all the newly founded, smaller-size settlements of the sixteenth century. Similarly, villages established by the gradual settling of semi-nomadic groups had also disappeared. This can justifiably be seen as a sign of re-nomadization. 89 One might expect such a phenomenon to have been particularly the case in the ‘grey area’ or zone of transition between Rum (Anatolia) and Şam (Syria), the area including the regions of İç-il, Maraş and Aleppo. 90 These were populated largely by semi-nomadic Turkish, Kurdish and Arab tribes;91 here mezraa-type settlements constituted a larger proportion of settlements compared with other parts of Anatolia.92 Sources also indicate from the s onwards a north-westward mass movement, a ‘nomadic invasion’, of Boz Ulus, Halep and Yeni-il Türkmen tribes from this particular zone into central and western Anatolia, all the way to the Aegean coastal areas.93 Simultaneously, some new villages appeared in different locations, including the higher mountain plateaux. This indicates one of the most drastic ruptures in the historical geography of Anatolia: a great shift in settlement patterns from open plains to mountains. According to Hütteroth, this period lasted for over two hundred years, until reversal began in the nineteenth century.94 With constant banditry and heavy exploitation by tax collectors, security became the main determinant of settlement patterns. The plains were increasingly left to either the poorest peasants or the new çiftlik-owning askeris, who formed the nucleus of an emerging landed aristocracy all over Anatolia. Other factors add to the picture of critical change. With large tracts of arable land destroyed or left uncultivated, and with a drastically reduced number of peasants 95 Frequent in villages, a gradual expansion of animal and a hand shift towards aremaining more pastoral economy occurred. years husbandry of famine went in hand with disease and pestilence.96 Earthquakes (especially those in and ) and other natural disasters and extreme climatic fluctuations compounded the problem.97 Although specific detail is lacking, it is clear that such catastrophic conditions must have affected the birth–death ratio to the detriment of the former. What the avarız registers of the s show as a drastic decrease of to per cent in the recorded taxpaying population can be accounted for partially by such a demographic crisis or Malthusian scissor.98
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On the other hand, there were perhaps as many uprooted peasants mobile in the countryside as there were recorded in the remaining villages, even in the mid-seventeenth century. The registers of the s suggest that a significant proportion of the population was either still in hiding to evade tax registration or was active in brigandage; also, tens of thousands of sekbans were either employed in the ever-expanding retinues of provincial governors or wandering around unemployed as celalis. In all cases they simply went unrecorded in the avarız/cizye registers. The same sources also reveal a significant level of internal migration.99 In effect, the Ottoman imperial treasury lost considerable tax revenue simply by erosion of the imperial tax base through the ‘loss’ of taxpaying subjects, as well asinthrough of theevkaf agricultural and 100 This economy. is mirrored the case destruction of large imperial , whose structure rural income sources suffered from these developments. Being unable to collect village revenues on time or in full, they often had to close their soup kitchens.101 Inevitably, the cycle of population dispersal, evasion of registration and tax erosion further deepened the empire’s financial crisis. Indicative of this was the extreme instability in the post of chief treasurer, the obvious scapegoat for financial failures. Evidence in contemporary chronicles testifies clearly how deadly a task the job of imperial treasurer became during the seventeenth century, with frequent changes of tenure as a result of kapıkulu rebellions or of the factional conflicts within the Istanbul ruling elite, and occasional execution.102 However, perhaps the single most important financial consequence of the celali movements was its crucial role in the dissolution of two basic institutions of the ‘classical’ Ottoman imperial regime, the timar and kul systems. As discussed above, the initial stages of the breakdown of both institutions were key factors in the formative celali period. The first wave of rebellions accelerated the process, as a result both of peasant flight and the sipahis’ own activity as celalis. Howard’s study of ‘inspection registers’ for reveals that there were substantial numbers of vacant and unassignable timars in western Anatolia and more than kılıç timars or reserve fiefs in the province of Rum without holders in .103 The villages whose revenues belonged to these timars were ruined and their inhabitants had dispersed; no one was interested in them.104 With the sipahis also went the bases of both the provincial administration and the military system. The former was gradually replaced by tax farming ( iltizam), with similar financial, administrative and military functions.105 Through creating revenue units (mukataa), mostly from former timars, and farming them out to the highest bidders under the iltizam system, the state in effect centralized and monetized the revenue-extraction system.106 The decline in sipahi numbers also created further avenues of military employment for a significant proportion of the celalis, recruited as sekban mercenaries either by provincial governors or by the state. There emerged a celali-ism self-perpetuating, which, the lasted the early sekban eighteenth century. Thissemi-institutionalized crucial change from timar to iltizam fineuntil line between and celali, and the implications of both aspects for the transformation of the imperial administration as a whole have yet to be adequately studied. As for the kul institution, both Janissaries and the sipahs had increasingly rooted themselves in the Ottoman countryside during the sixteenth century, also contributing significantly to the celali movements, often as leaders of small-sized locally active brigand bands rather than initiators of big rebellions. These members of the kapıkulu class seem to have benefited most from the celali chaos. Avarız registers of the s
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show a significant number of Janissaries and sipahs of varying ranks, along with many provincial sipahis, established in hundreds of villages across Anatolia, holding çiftliks in their own names.107 These were either kuls who had acquired lands abandoned by peasants or former peasants who had obtained kapıkulu rank. In other words, it is highly likely that some çiftlik-holding kapıkulus were native (yerli) peasants, often referred to angrily as ‘outsiders’ (ecnebi) in contemporary sources. However, we see the same groups in the Balkan countryside also referred to in these seventeenth-century sources as sons of kul (kul oğlu) or ‘local Janissaries’ (yerli yeniçeri).108 A study of the local and imperial dynamics behind these similar processes in different parts of the empire assist in reaching clearer conclusions on the role of the celali movements in such would a development, particularly in Anatolia. It is nevertheless certain that most Janissaries in Anatolian villages were men of devşirme srcin who had acquired reaya çiftliks. The maliye ahkam registers and the kadi sicils contain many legal cases throughout the seventeenth century where returning peasants had found their lands occupied by the members of the askeri and demanded them back.109 There are also cases where such askeris claimed exemption from the compulsory avarız and tekalif taxes paid by all land-holders and houseowners irrespective of their status, military or reaya. All in all, peasant flight, insecurity, and the appearance of askeri çiftliks in villages signify a steady change in the position of the peasantry, who gradually lost much of their former freedom and became dependent sharecroppers or wage labourers.110 VIOLE NC E AN D TH E
CELALI
S
Although socio-economic factors have always been prominent in historical discussion of the celali phenomenon, some historians have recently proposed an analysis emphasizing the political perspective and the state’s point of view, focusing either on institutional dissolution, on state-making, or on centralization or consolidation of imperial power.111 In particular, Karen Barkey has demonstrated masterfully how state–bandit (i.e., the celali leaders) relations developed with a certain degree of flexibility on the part of the central government and a large margin of negotiation and bargaining.112 Such analyses have contributed greatly to general understanding of the phenomenon and of the changing nature of the state in the post-classical period. However, their primary focus on the ‘politics’ of the celali movements overshadows the internal dynamics of socio-economic conditions and the rural misery which initially produced the main human source of the movement, the ‘push’ factors which drove large masses in rural Anatolia first to the margins of their villages and then out of their rural confines, both physical and economic.113 It is true that peasants were often utilized by rebel pashas or other leaders for. their ownclear agendas, which were differentoften fromsought those of the celali uprooted reaya It is also that leaders of theessentially major rebellions personal ends, bargaining with the imperial centre over their own reincorporation into the askeri class and abandoning the large majority of their followers or allies to join together again under another celali leader or as smaller independent brigand bands. The problem here is that the large, explosive pool of uprooted peasants (and nomads) is usually treated simply as the followers of the major celali leaders, as instruments of intra-elite conflicts over military-administrative positions and large revenue sources. As marginalized peasants, they had, perhaps, no clearly defined agenda of col
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lective action, nor a persistent unifying goal other than simply freeing themselves from demographic-economic pressures and financial injustices. However, they were initially driven into banditry and rebellion for reasons essentially different from those of the celali leaders of askeri srcin. Seeing them totally in the context of a power struggle in a ‘declining’/‘dissolving’ or ‘centralizing’ empire or in a process of ‘state-making’ at imperial level using the state’s terminology of ‘banditry’ gives only a partial picture of the celali phenomenon. Rather, the celali movement represents a social phenomenon with a dangerously self-destructive character. Without a visible ideology to channel their modest everyday concerns, or a higher cause to die for zealously, seventeenthcelalis became century the principal actors in a vicious circle of collective violence, if not a collective action.114 However, the celali movement was not just a response to objective deprivation, but also a social action which may well be seen as a ‘rising’, if not a ‘peasant rebellion’ in the narrower sense.115 While serfs in the feudal west rose either against their landlords or the centralizing state as their lords’ principal ally, in a sense Ottoman peasants did the same, though in their own traditional ways. In the absence of an immediate landlord, they reacted through banditry and occasional rebellion, taking advantage of their ‘freedom’ (both legal and de facto) to challenge conditions partially created by the state.116 Moreover, while European peasant rebels aimed to better their conditions as peasants under a landlord, with no option of changing either their status or their class, Ottoman peasants did have alternatives. Becoming a student (suhte), a mercenary soldier-brigand (sekban) or simply an outright bandit (celali) meant becoming disconnected from one’s place of srcin with no intention of return. 117 This alienation from srcinal social confines and peasant life was perhaps the key factor in the development of chronic banditry.118 In this respect, it is imperative not to equate celalis – i.e., former peasants – with the peasantry as a whole.119 Celalis neither acted with a group consciousness nor revolted in the name of the peasantry as a class. Seeing the movement as ‘artificial’ with ‘no proclaimed ally or enemy and no significant ideology’120 makes it neither less real nor asocial. This was a social action, but one of marginalized and excluded groups who spoke only for themselves. It succeeded in that many celalis were partially incorporated into the newly emerging system during the seventeenth century as a new sekban military force, and became fully institutionalized in the following century as the troops of ayan-governors. These bandit-soldiers and their violence, both legitimized and to some extent controlled by their new patrons, became an integral element of a decentralized imperial system, of what Tezcan calls the ‘second empire’, restructured on a much more collaborative basis with provincial leaders.121 The pejorative tone of the imperial term ‘ celali rebel’ (celali eşkiyası) for all forms
of resistance and rebellion significantly blurs the full social character of the rural disturbances in Anatolia. In both contemporary imperial parlance and modern historiography this blanket terminology denotes not only the chronic reaya brigandage but also the big askeri-led rebellions. Officially, the unlawful brigand-like acts of Ottoman officials-turned-bandits (with their sekbans) were termed ‘oppression’ (zulm ve ta’addi), whereas similar acts of vagabond levendat groups were generally called banditry (şekavet or fesat). However, just as the distinction between sekban as mercenary and celali as brigand was ambiguous, so too was the line between the violence committed by either side. As Cook emphasizes,
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tax collection and banditry collapse into the same undifferentiated activity of living off the land, so that whether or not a man is a rebel comes to depend less on what he does than on the more or less fortuitous fact that he has or has not an official authorization for his maraudings.122 Despite official attempts at differentiation, celali terminology quickly became the shorthand description for all kinds of rural revolt and violence, appropriately perhaps given that the nature of the violence and its destructive impact on rural society was essentially the same. celaliamong To add to the confusion, Ottoman bureaucrats alsowhich applied same terminology to the banditry, rampage and highway robbery hadthe been routine some Türkmen, Kurdish and Arab tribal, nomadic or semi-nomadic populations long before the Ottoman period and continued without much change under their rule. 123 We have already seen that semi-nomadic elements were also an integral part of the celali phenomenon, although their involvement had causes significantly different from those of peasants.124 Leaving aside their rebellious acts as celalis, banditry as a criminal act and banditry as a way of life become extremely difficult to separate one from another. Similarly, the imperial administration was quick to label as celali those peasants whose legitimate attempts at self-defence by organizing themselves militarily under a leader (say a former sipahi) against the excesses of an administrative official (say a governor) got out of hand and became violent and destructive.125 Only in such limited cases could we speak of a certain degree of ‘resistance’ or ‘rebellion’ on the part of the Anatolian peasants by allying themselves with a celali or bandit chief against ‘official oppression’.126 Also, calling these peasants celali reduces to an absurdity the distinction between victim and victimizer. Finally, given that the most common characteristic of the acts referred to by the blanket term celali is the undifferentiated and illegitimate use of violence, those whom contemporary sources often refer to as janissary thugs (yeniçeri zorbaları) and soldier-brigands of the sekban corps (bölük eşkiyası) active throughout the period both in Istanbul and in the Asiatic provinces were also part of the same celali movement.127 Contemporary sources show that the ideals of justice and the legitimacy of state power also diminished greatly in the seventeenth century, as the state had serious difficulty in upholding these effectively under conditions of collective violence and intraelite conflicts at the centre. Yet they still remained the only hope for the ‘real losers’ of the period, namely the desperate peasants holding on in their villages or returning after some years or decades, who needed to resort to judicial mechanisms either through the kadi courts in provinces or the imperial divan in Istanbul.128 The imperial centre was itself often in a state of desperation. It had to allow peasants to arm themselves 129
130sekbans to against typeself-defence for augmentthethecelali imperial terror;troops it was sentreduced againsttocelali hiring armies peasants in Anatolia. and celali The relationships between state, peasants and celalis were constantly changing. How was a celali leader or pasha to deal with the celalis under his command once he had been pardoned and had accepted a position for himself and his immediate associates within the askeri class? The resulting uneasy relationship often led to a former rebel pasha being prepared to sacrifice his men (whom he himself now termed celali) simply by driving them into the most dangerous battlegrounds against, say, Iranian armies in the East.131
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In conclusion, analysis of the celali phenomenon primarily at a political level falls short in understanding the full picture. Newly explored sources now allow us to reexamine demographic-economic factors, social deprivation and desperation in rural Anatolia as essential and significant components of the internal dynamics of the celali movements as a social phenomenon. Only then will we be able to contextualize other political and military factors, including the management of violence in operation, where the same celali group or army fights against the state forces today, against Austrian or Iranian armies tomorrow, and against another celali army the following day, in accordance with constantly changing positions. As ordinary bandits at local level or as sekban adventurers, recklessly mercenarybetween employment from one Anatolia (or even the empire) to theseeking other, swinging the positions of end celaliof-turnedsoldier and soldier-turned-celali, their mere physical presence and violence became the only source of survival and, to some degree, a psychological driving force. In the absence of a comprehensible target or a common political or ideological cause, all celali activities became potentially self-destructive both for the perpetrators themselves and for the targeted groups, primarily the peasantry, as well as for the physical and agricultural environment. The resulting atmosphere of general lawlessness eventually created its own logic, justification and self-perpetuating character, such that banditry came to represent not the exceptional in Anatolian social history, but an integral part of the new routine of rural life, surviving in varying forms and contexts until the beginning of the twentieth century.132 NOTES Celali, the most common and pejorative Ottoman imperial term for bandits and rebels, srcinated from the kızılbaş-related rebellion in the name of Şeyh Celal in in central Anatolia. Tezcan : –; cf. Tezcan a, where the author interprets the fiscal crisis of these years by reference to the ‘dictates of market forces’ rather than the difficulties faced by the Ottoman imperial treasury. Selâniki Mustafa Efendi : I, –, , –; Âli : III, –; Hasan Beyzade Ahmed : I, –; II, –. Koca Sinan Paşa telhisleri . Ibid.: –, –, –. Ibid.: –, , . Akdağ ; İnalcık . Âli : III, –, –; Peçevi : II, –; Andreasyan –: . Barkey : . Koca Sinan Paşa telhisleri : passim. Arıcanlı and Kafadar . In Özel . , faced with resentment among Anatolian sipahis following the execution of his son Mustafa, Süleyman I ordered that fiefs worth , akçe and over be given only to imperial Janissaries, leaving provincial sipahis with smaller timars (Turan : ; Cezar : –). Özel : –; Barkey : . Faroqhi b: –, . Akdağ : –, –; Akdağ ; Cezar : –. Turan ; Yıldırım . Akdağ ; Cezar : –, ; Yıldırım .
— Oktay Özel — Cezar : –; Yücel : Kitâb-ı Mesâlihi’l Müslimîn, –. Turan : –, . Âli : III, ; cf. Yücel : Kitâb-ı Müstetâb, . İnalcık . Özel : –; McGowan : –; İnalcık . Cf. Tabak for a Mediterranean perspective on such developments. Özel ; cf. Gündüz : . Cook : –; Özel : –; Öz : –. Cook ; Öz ; İslamoğlu-İnan . Gümüşçü ; cf. Hütteroth , . Peçevi Kafadar: –: II, –, ; Yıldırım –; . Hezarfen ; Adanır : –. Soyudoğan : –. For a recent re-evaluation of dissent and popular rebellions in the Ottoman empire, see Barkey : ff. Cezar : –; Cook : –; Koç . Cf. Cook : –, and, for the s, Tansel : –, , –. Arıcanlı and Kafadar . Koç ; cf. Kafadar –: –. Akdağ : –. Jennings, ; cf. Cezar : –. Cook : –. Akdağ : –. Koca Sinan Paşa telhisleri ; Âli , III: . Peçevi : II, –; –, . İnalcık a; cf. Uluçay : –. Topçular Kâtibi , I: .
Koca telhisleri : ,cf.–. AkdağSinan :Paşa –; İnalcık ; Faroqhi b. White : esp. ff. Andıç and Andıç . Cook : –. Celali historiography rarely considers the fact that these sipâhis were accompanied by their peasant retainers (cebeli). Around , there were c., dirlik-holders and , retainers in the Asiatic provinces (Ayn-i Ali Efendi ). The campaign could have produced some , fugitives of sipahi-related srcin. On the reliability of figures given in contemporary sources, see Akdağ : –. Peçevi : II, –; Naima : I, –; Topçular Kâtibi : I, –. Griswold : ff. Topkapı Sarayı Archive, Istanbul R (Karayazıcı’s letter); TSMA E (Nasuh Paşa’s letter). For access to these documents, I am most grateful to Günhan Börekçi. See also Andreasyan –: –; White : –. Griswold : –; Barkey : –. Naima : II, ; Griswold : –.
Özel :: –.ff.; Safi : II, –. Griswold Akdağ ; Griswold : esp. –. Peçevi : II, ; Topçular Kâtibi : I, –, , . Cf. Akdağ : –; Darling : . Safi : II, ; cf. Topçular Kâtibi : I, –. Murphey : –. Naima : II, . Peçevi : II, –; Naima : II, ff., –, –, –. For an analysis of the historiography of Abaza Mehmed Paşa’s rebellion, see Piterberg . Selçuk .
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Naima : II, , , , , ; Murphey : –. Akdağ ; Zak’aria : ; Andreasyan, –. Akdağ : –; Silahdar Mehmed (n.d.). Özel : –; Koçi Bey risalesi : . Simeon : –, –, , ; Akdağ : –. White ; Hütteroth : –. Abou-el-Haj [] ; Öz . Faroqhi a, b; Orbay , b, . Abou-el-Haj [] ; Howard ; Tezcan ; Piterberg . McGowan ; Darling .
See avarız esp.registers, Kiel ; see Ünal Özel ; ; Öz Özand , Acun , . –; Gökçe . For sample published See e.g. Naima : II, –; Simeon : –; Andreasyan –: ; Yücel : Kitab-i Müstetab, , ; Koçi Bey risalesi : –, ; Özel : –. Akdağ : –. Börekçi : –. Canbakal : . Katip Çelebi –: ; cf. Akdağ : . Simeon : , –, –; Andreasyan –: –. Evliya Çelebi [] –: II, –. Roe (n.d. []): –; cf. Zinkeisen : ; Hütteroth : ; Arıcanlı and Kafadar : –. Griswold : –. Özel , ; Öz , –. BOA: MAD . I am grateful to Dr Özer Küpeli of Ege University for allowing me to consult his unpublished article on this register. Özel : –; cf. Akdağ : –. Özel Gökçe: :–; , ,cf.–. Koç : –. Hütteroth : –. For earlier works referring to ‘re nomadization’ during this period, see Hütteroth : –; Faroqhi : ; Özel : –, ; Öz . Kafadar : . Survey registers dated suggest that, in Zulkadriye (Maraş) and Aleppo provinces, the tribal nomadic elements constituted more than half of the total population (Murphey : –). For expansion of small settlements and gradual sedentarization of tribal elements in some of these areas during the sixteenth century, see Hütteroth : –; İnalcık : –. White : ff. Hütteroth : –; İnalcık : –. Hütteroth ; Adanır . Hütteroth : –; Güçer ; Orbay . The destructive effects of drought and famine on crop patterns and daily lives of peasants in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century empire are often mentioned in local studies. See Ambraseys and Finkel . For climatic Ice Age’, see Goldstone ; White . fluctuations, often referred to as part of the ‘little Özel . Özel : –. Özel . Faroqhi a; Orbay . Orhonlu : –; Koca Sinan Paşa Telhisleri : passim. BOA, Mühimme Defteri (Zeyl) : /; cf. Özel : , n. . Howard : ; cf. Ayn-i Ali Efendi ; Koçi Bey risalesi .
— Oktay Özel — İnalcık a; on absentee-governorship and iltizam in Ayntab, see Kunt ; Canbakal : –. Darling, : ff.; Adanır : –. Cf. Salzmann . Özel ; cf. Akdağ : –. Radušev et al. . Özel : , –. McGowan : ff. İslamoğlu-İnan ; Faroqhi : –; Faroqhi ; Barkey . Barkey’s somewhat ahistoric and chronologically vague argument on state-making or ‘centralization’ in the celali context is less convincing but deserves separate study. Cf. Griswold : , who emphasizes the ‘depth of despair in Anatolia and the extraordinary spiritual malaise and physical poverty epidemic in the peninsula’. Andıç and Andıç ; cf. Adanır : –. Cook : ; cf. Akdağ : ; Akdağ : . Goldstone ; cf. Faroqhi . Faroqhi : . Cf. Barkey : –. Faroqhi : –. Barkey : . Tezcan b, ; see also Aksan : , ; Yaycıoğlu . Cook : . For similar developments in the Ottoman Balkans during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, see Adanır : –; Moutaftchieva . Soyudoğan : –. In areas such as the province of Karaman, however, one might expect that the agricultural crisis, drought and famine of the late sixteenth century did not differentiate much between nomads and peasants. See White : ff. E.g. Cennetoğlu, who is said to have appeared as the defender of peasants in the province of
Aydın in the: s Cf. Barkey . (Uluçay : –). Peçevi : II, –. Faroqhi ; Adanır : . Naima : II, , . Akdağ : . Peçevi : II, –, on attitudes to celali troops in the campaign. Cf. Adanır : –; Reid –.
PART III
THE WIDER EMPIRE
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BETWEE N UNIVE RSALI STIC CLAIMS AND REALITY * Ottoman frontiers in the early modern period
Dariusz Kołodziejczyk
W
hen studying the borders of any empire that claims to be universal, one must differentiate between its imaginary territorial ambitions, often encompassing the whole universe, and the real limit of influence, dictated by geopolitical as well as ecological concerns. In their best-selling neo-Marxist book Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri stress the crucial importance of borders in the making of any empire: ‘the sovereignty of Empire itself is realized at the margins, where borders are flexible and identities are hybrid and fluid. It would be difficult to say which is more important to Empire, the center or the margins’.1 The belief that a border is indispensable for any empire or civilization is also shared by a Polish author who can hardly be suspected of Marxist sympathies. In his essay on the eastern frontiers of Europe, Jan Kieniewicz writes: ‘a border first reveals the extent of rule, designates the reach of strivings for hegemony, and is a necessary part of an empire. On the other hand, a border is the consequence of an axiological process of spatial identification’.2 Both quotations describe an empire or civilization which, by acknowledging its limits, has already lost its faith in the universality of its might and values. The other side of the coin is represented by Denys Hay’s description of medieval Europe as an ‘aggressive Christendom uncommitted to any single continent’, which only with time limited itself to the Latin West: ‘so long as th[is] notion was a living notion, Christendom was potentially the whole earth’.3 Against this background we can consider Maria Pia Pedani’s explanation of the Ottoman reluctance to conclude formal treaties with Christian neighbours: ‘[t]o accept the idea of a border with another country meant also to recognize the right of the other to exist’,4 and therefore of the Ottoman empire to With have limits. the conquest of Constantinople in and of the three holy cities of Islam – Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem – in –, the Ottomans appropriated the universalistic claims of both the Roman empire and the Muslim caliphate. Whether or not the Ottomans really believed that they could extend their civilization and religion to the utter limits of the inhabited world (some certainly did), such a claim was often expressed in their propaganda and political language. Even in the late seventeenth century, the Ottoman grand vezir Kara Mustafa Paşa challenged the Habsburg hegemony in Central Europe and deliberately humiliated the ambassadors of France,
— Dariusz Kołodziejczyk —
Poland–Lithuania and Russia by regarding their rulers as infidels and hence inferior to the Ottoman padişah. In relation to their Muslim neighbours, the Ottomans stressed their exclusive right to patronage over Mecca and vehemently denied it not only to the Shiite Persian Safavids, whom they regarded as heretics, but even to their Sunni Muslim brethren, the Moghuls of India. OTTOMAN FRONTIERS IN THEORY
The once powerful vision of Paul Wittek, which credited the spirit of Holy War, gazi warriors, for the Ottoman rise from a marchland principality to shared by Muslimempire, a three-continent has been seriously challenged in recent decades, though not overturned entirely. Colin Heywood, while labelling Wittek’s view as ‘wildly romantic’, admits that many Ottoman soldiers probably still believed in the ever-advancing, ‘ever-victorious frontier’ (serhadd-i mansure), at least until the war of –, and perhaps even longer.5 The Ottoman term uc, like the earlier Islamic sugur (Arabic thughur), denoted a marchland or frontier zone bordering on non-Muslim territory. Its open, dynamic character stood in contrast to the type of precisely demarcated and recognized boundary known to the Ottomans as hadd (pl. hudud) or sınır.6 Arguing that in the Ottoman Maghreb – the infamous Barbary coast – the gazi spirit survived even after the treaty of Karlowitz in , Heywood identifies such common elements of frontier realities as the abundance of unemployed young males, especially outlaws and recent converts, sharing the ‘martial spirit’ and the prominence of the slave trade and ransom/redemption systems in the local economy. 7 Presenting themselves as good Muslims in order to gain religious legitimacy, the Ottoman rulers soon became the captives of their own policy. Muslim scholars did not hesitate openly to pronounce the ruler’s obligations with regard to cihad. Even the most peacefully minded sultan was expected to widen the ‘domain of Islam’ ( darü’lIslam) at the cost of the ‘domain of war’ (darü’l-harb), inhabited by infidels and predestined for Muslim conquest sooner or later. Consequently, a lasting peace with non-Muslims, however politically rewarding, was difficult to attain without violating Muslim religious law. Apart from the ‘domain of Islam’ and ‘domain of war’, Muslim legal scholars, especially from the Shafi‘i school, discerned two intermediary categories. The first was the ‘domain of jihad’ (darü’l-cihad), referring to territories already in Muslim hands but still insecure. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Ottomans constantly referred to (Libyan) Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers as darü’l-cihad ve’l-harb. In the late seventeenth century this term applied also to Belgrade, endangered by Habsburg troops, and to the recently conquered Polish fortress of Kamieniec (today Kam’janec’ in Ukraine).8 In effect, the ‘domain of jihad’ could be identified uc. category had a more practical value. This was the ‘domain with thesecond early Ottoman The intermediary of covenant’ (darü’l-‘ahd). According to the Koran (: ), Christians and Jews were permitted to retain their religion and live in peace on the condition of paying a tribute (cizye) to a Muslim ruler and accepting his superiority. This applied both to non-Muslim subjects of Muslim rulers and to non-Muslims living under non-Muslim rulers, where the latter recognized a tributary status vis-à-vis a Muslim sovereign.9 Today, textbooks of Ottoman history typically mention four Christian tributary states in south-eastern Europe as falling into this category, namely Wallachia, Moldavia, Tran-
— Ottoman frontiers in the early modern period —
sylvania and Ragusa (Dubrovnik). Yet, this group was much larger, to mention only several Christian tributary states in present-day Georgia. According to Gábor Ágoston, ‘a common feature of the frontier territories was the condominium that is the joint rule of the former power elite and the Ottoman authorities’.10 In Ottoman eyes, such European countries as Venice, the part of Hungary controlled by the Habsburgs, Poland–Lithuania and Muscovy were seen, if temporarily, as tributary states. Demand for tribute – even if symbolically small – therefore figured prominently in diplomatic correspondence between Istanbul and neighbouring Christian rulers. If a Polish king or a Muscovite tsar refused to send tribute directly to the sultan, at least they were 11
expected to send ‘gifts’ to hisofvassal, the Crimean khan. ratified The question why themight famous French–Ottoman alliance was never officially by Süleyman be easily explained by the fact that the sultan could not do so formally unless François I agreed to become his vassal. The sultan’s claim to be caliph and political leader of all Sunni Muslims takes the question further. The ideology of cihad could be used not just against Christians, but also against the Shiite Safavids, regarded as heretics, and even against Hindu and Chinese rulers. In various periods, the Ottoman sultans were at least nominally regarded as sovereigns by numerous local Muslim rulers in Sumatra, India, subSaharan Africa and Central Asia. As late as , the Muslim ruler of Kashgar, Yakub Bey, placed the name of Sultan Abdülaziz on his coins and pronounced it in the Friday prayer (hutbe).12 Judging by their religious principles and imperial propaganda, the early modern Ottomans seemed to claim the entire world, recognizing no fixed borders. Yet, conclusions drawn merely from ideological credos and based on ready-made theoretical models can be misleading. For instance, Rifaat Ali Abou-el-Haj combined Wittek’s view of the Ottoman state as an ever-expanding organism invigorated by the religious zeal of Muslim warriors with the application of the ‘open frontier’ concept, developed by the followers of Frederick Jackson Turner.13 Stressing the state of perpetual warfare on the pre-Karlowitz Ottoman borders, Abou-el-Haj defined these as ‘rough, vague, indefinite military zones between the belligerent forces’, where neither the Ottomans, nor even the Europeans, were familiar with the idea of a linear boundary until after .14 Several critics have disagreed.15 Maria Pia Pedani concluded that, since Ottoman–Venetian demarcations in Dalmatia dated back into the fifteenth century, by ‘the Ottomans had already had common borders with the Republic of Venice for two centuries’.16 If there was any novelty in the post-Karlowitz demarcation, it was due to Marsigli (alias Marsili), the Habsburg head commissioner. As well as using modern cartography to delineate the Habsburg–Ottoman boundary, he envisioned a sanitary cordon, furnished with lazarettos, in order to protect Habsburg territories from future 17
epidemics. A useful model of border development was proposed in by Lucien Febvre. He traced the change from a medieval uninhabited zone, separating sparse human communities, to an early modern fortified military line, to a mental ‘ditch between nationalities . . . a moral frontier’ characteristic of the post- nationalist era. 18 However, perhaps the most sophisticated model of the historical development of European boundaries was proposed by Peter Sahlins with regard to the French– Spanish border in the Pyrenees. Sahlins proposes three rough stages in the development of ‘his’ Pyrenean border. In the first stage, which prevailed until the late seventeenth
— Dariusz Kołodziejczyk —
century, royal jurisdiction was over subjects and not over a delimited territory. Territorial boundaries remained unimportant compared to the boundaries of jurisdictional competency in the borderland.19 The second stage was characterized by the creation of a military border, envisaged to reach ‘natural’, geographical limits, preferably mountains or rivers. Foreign enclaves were purged and sanitary cordons created, as during the War of the Pyrenees between and . 20 For security reasons, borderlands remained undeveloped and depopulated; few paved roads were constructed, as the respective governments tried to prevent possible invasions of ‘perfidious and duplicitous neighbors’.21 The third and final stage meant, first, nationalization of the state border, then politicization of national boundaries national territory. defined,and ‘natural’ military borders gave way to preciseand demarcated ones; theVaguely border – established by commissioners – twisted, turned and zig-zagged, leaving everything ‘French’ on one hand and ‘Spanish’ on the other. The expression ‘territorial violation’ – and the associated formula of ‘rape’ used in reference to a border – properly belongs to the Age of Nationalism.22 Having in mind the models of Febvre and Sahlins, we can easily identify the first ‘primitive’ stage, characterized both by uninhabited zones, separating human communities, and by the state jurisdiction over subjects rather than a delimited territory, with the Ottoman uc or the Turnerian ‘open frontier’. Yet, long before the Ottomans also knew the terms hudud and sınır, referring to demarcated linear boundaries. As well as the demarcations with Venice already mentioned, the first Ottoman demarcation with Moldavia srcinated in the late fifteenth century. 23 At the opposite extremity of the empire, the Ottomans likewise tried to define their borders. In , following the pacification of with Shah Abbas, Osman II ordered the demarcation of the boundaries of the eastern provinces bordering on Safavid Iran, namely Basra, Baghdad, Şehrizul, Van and Erzurum, in accordance with the border established by the treaty of Amasya in .24 The Ottomans also recognized spatial limits to their power in the south, with Süleyman I referring to Yemen as ‘one of the furthermost frontier areas of my well-protected dominions’.25 By analogy, the port of Muskat was labelled ‘the frontier fortress of the infidels’ before its capture from the Portuguese in .26 THE NORTHERN FRONTIER
Ottoman borders in the east and south are rarely discussed by historians.27 Long scholarly neglect of the large area of Ottoman–Spanish confrontation in North Africa provoked Andrew Hess to term it ‘the forgotten frontier’. 28 It was the Ottoman land frontiers with their Christian neighbours in Europe, especially the Ottoman–Habsburg frontier that mostly influenced scholarly imagination. Numerous narratives tell in us Hungary, that the almost permanent Habsburg–Ottoman confrontation had turned Hungarian lands into an area of constant warfare. Specialized paramilitary formations, such as the notorious akıncıs and hayduts, devastated and depopulated the country, leaving only Abou-el-Haj’s ‘rough, vague, indefinite military zones between the belligerent forces’. Yet, there is clear evidence of another kind of frontier. Josef Blaškovič’s map of the Ottoman province of Uyvar (today Nové Zámky in Slovakia) in was drawn on the basis of a contemporary Ottoman survey register. It clearly shows the Habsburg
— Ottoman frontiers in the early modern period —
enclaves of Nitra and Leva (Levice) surrounded by Ottoman lands, and also many Ottoman enclaves dispersed within Habsburg territories.29 Also, the Ottoman kanunname of the province of Uyvar lists specific tolls on the export of oxen, hides and salt to the Habsburg ‘domain of war’, and vice versa, on the import of pottery, glass and iron products as well as English cloth to the ‘domain of Islam’. We learn that construction timber in Ottoman Hungary srcinated from the mountains in Habsburg Slovakia and was floated southward along the Vah river, and, conversely, that millstones in Habsburg territories srcinated from the Ottoman province of Uyvar. 30 It seems that ‘constant warfare’ left much space for everyday local trade. Certainly, the Habsburg– Ottoman border Hungary was neither rough nor the vague forbythegarrison local inhabitants. A recent study byinMark Stein confirms that, ‘despite raids troops and the campaigns against the Habsburgs in –, as well as an official ideology of gaza, the century saw little change in the size of the territory controlled by the Porte’. In fact, the Ottomans substantially reduced border garrisons and even considered the liquidation of the post station (menzil) in Uyvar, as urgency of communication was not deemed particularly important in peacetime.31 A glance further to the Ottoman north-east brings another surprise. A first demarcation between the Ottoman empire and Poland–Lithuania was ordered in , following the treaty of , although the appointed commissioners failed to meet in the steppe due to mutual distrust. For almost another century, the border remained ‘open’, though both sides tacitly admitted that it ran along the rivers Dniester, Jahorlyk and Kodyma. Strangely, the lack of formal demarcation did not spoil the friendly relations which lasted for most of that period, with the exception of the Polish– Ottoman war of –. The first successful demarcation occurred shortly thereafter, in , confirming the actual border and32 even moving its eastern section slightly southwards in favour of Poland–Lithuania. Most striking and seemingly unusual is the Polish–Ottoman demarcation of . In the Ottoman army conquered the Polish fortress of Kamieniec, along with the province of Podolia. It took another eight years of campaigns and diplomatic disputes until both sides agreed to demarcate the new border. This demarcation, effected between August and October , provides us with the richest documentation regarding border-making in the whole history of Polish–Ottoman relations. Both sides prepared in advance impressive documentary and historical evidence in order to further their claims.33 Two official protocols survive, one in Turkish and one in Polish.34 When compared with Sahlins’s theoretical model of border development, this demarcation, though almost two centuries older, surprisingly fits the third, most advanced stage, embodied by the French–Spanish demarcation of . In the Pyrenees in : ‘The first stone is situated on the northeast side of the road from 35 Innext Puigcerdà to Llívia, at the site called de Xirosa, to the stone had been the boundary of Llívia, Ur, Pontarro and Càldegues’. Podolia in old : ‘Anwhich earth mound was raised as a boundary marker on the top of a hill covered with an oakgrove, situated in the kıble direction from the road leading from Jazlivec’ and passing at the said place’.36 The only notable difference is that the nineteenth-century border stones were numbered and the distance between them was recorded in metres, while in the seventeenth century the distance between boundary mounds was measured in hours of walk. A memoir by a Polish participant provides a vivid description of this demarcation.
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— Ottoman frontiers in the early modern period —
When it came to raising a mound, the Turks, using spades attached to their saddles, in the twinkling of an eye raised a mound of turf after digging around a big oak trunk [that was] in the middle. Then, after finishing the job their superiors climbed on top of it and ululated like dogs with their faces turned up, praising God that they had conquered so much with the sword.37 The most precise demarcation in the long history of Polish–Ottoman relations therefore occurred not after the Karlowitz treaty, but before. The extant protocols of the post-Karlowitz demarcation, restoring Podolia to Poland, are much less precise than from . agreed the border area shouldthose be restricted. As The in thecommissioners Pyrenees around thisthat time,settlement there wasin a shared predilec38 tion towards ‘natural frontiers’, in this case the River Dniester. This apparent ‘regress’ observed between the Ottoman–Polish demarcations of and is not the only challenge to the neat, positivist model of border development. During the very same demarcation of , while the western, Podolian section of the Polish–Ottoman border was meticulously delineated, its eastern section, dividing Poland from Dnieper Ukraine (ruled autonomously by the Cossacks, who had recently acknowledged Ottoman suzerainty), was left vague and open. This was not by accident. Writing to his envoy in Rome, the Polish king expressed his hope for a quick return of the Cossacks under Polish patronage, concluding that to demarcate Ukraine from Poland would be premature, as ‘whomever the Cossacks choose, [that ruler] will keep the Ukraine as well’.39 The notion that royal jurisdiction over subjects had primacy over territorial control, typical of the first, ‘primitive’ stage in Febvre’s typology, coincided with elements typical for the second, ‘military’, or even the third, ‘linear’ stage within the very same demarcation.40 The above statement is also valid in respect of Ottoman demarcations with Russia. In , when the first formal Ottoman–Russian treaty was negotiated in the Crimean capital Bahçesaray, neither side undertook any demarcation but deliberately left the border zone empty, forbidding settlement on either side of the bordering River Dnieper.41 Only after the Ottoman–Russian negotiations of – was a demarcation successfully effected, in . However, unlike the Ottoman post-Karlowitz demarcations with Venice, the Habsburgs and Poland–Lithuania, the demarcation with Russia did not leave any physical evidence in the terrain. In their final protocol the commissioners clearly stated: ‘we have confirmed the border by no other signs but this written testimony’.42 And yet, notwithstanding the apparently more ‘primitive’ character of Ottoman–Russian demarcations, already in both sides knew to further their arguments by such ‘modern’ devices as ‘a printed map of German press’, supplemented with handwritten corrections by a member of the Russian delegation.43 Seventeenth-century Russians werereturning also familiar quarantine that even affected the Russian embassy from with the Crimea after requirements the peace negotiations in . While the envoys were detained for one month in the border town of Borysov-Gorodok, the contents of their papers were dictated through the wall of fire and smoke so that they could be immediately known in Moscow.44 The fact that in the very same year the Ottomans demarcated one section of their border (Podolia in ) and refrained from demarcating another section (Ukraine in from Poland and in from Russia), or that a meticulous border demarcation with Poland in was replaced twenty-three years later by a much less detailed one
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cannot be explained simply by a rise and fall of the ‘spirit of holy war’, or by a fluctuating level of maturity of Ottoman state structures. Perhaps an explanation lies in the ecology of the delimited lands. While more densely populated, agricultural areas such as Dalmatia, Hungary or Podolia were demarcated already in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ukrainian Black Sea steppes waited for demarcation until the Russian conquest and colonization in the late eighteenth century.45 The East European steppe, like North African deserts or Caucasian and Yemeni mountains, enjoyed looser state control which enabled the preservation of so-called tribalism, tolerated by the Ottomans.46 Even in the nineteenth century, under ‘modern’ French administration, Algerian Morocco were demarcated only as far Teniet sidi-Sassi, around kmfrontiers from thewith Mediterranean. Beyond this extended theasbarely controllable 47 pays du fusil. The Ottomans’ ability to effect demarcations did not rule out their attachment to the gaza spirit. Two Ottoman copies exist of the meticulous protocol of the Polish– Ottoman demarcation of . One, provided with seals and signatures by the Ottoman commissioners, was given to their Polish peers. 48 The second was recorded in the survey register of the Ottoman province of Podolia.49 Contrary to expectations, this second copy, intended ‘merely’ for domestic use, is much more rhetorical. Mehmed IV, for whom the conquest of Podolia in was the first campaign in which he took part in person, is referred to in the second copy as the ‘father of victories and gazas’. Moreover, the second copy begins with a religious preamble that is missing in the first copy. This expresses the omnipotence of God and the temporary character of all human borders, quoting a saying of the Prophet Muhammad which promises that sooner or later all the lands of unbelievers will be open to Muslim warriors. The implication is that one should not treat borders too seriously, since only God may hand out kingdoms to the rulers in this world.50 The preamble omitted from the Polish copy also refers to ‘giaours [who,] having perverse ideas and hostile to the manifest faith, flee consistently and incessantly from their solid castles, fortresses, and forts’. The ideological preamble could well serve internal Ottoman propaganda, but clearly was considered inappropriate when dealing with foreign partners. A parallel example is provided by the document of the post-Karlowitz Ottoman– Venetian demarcation, dated . This demarcation was the result of prolonged negotiations between the commissioners of the two states. Yet, the preamble of the Ottoman copy, produced by a chancery anxious to conceal the unpleasant contents of the Karlowitz treaties, gives the impression that this was a unilateral privilege granted by a benevolent sultan at the humble request of the Venetian infidels.51 The topos of ‘defeated barbarians’, humbly asking for peace regardless of the actual power relationships, was not an Ottoman invention. The ancient Romans, when forced to pay tribute honorary to the Huns, this tribute as a voluntary subsidy and even granted Attila the titlepresented .52 magister utriusque militiae To sum up, while the ideology of holy war could still be alive, at least among some segments of Ottoman society, and served well internal propaganda, everyday praxis as well as political, logistical and geographical limitations obliged the Ottomans to adopt a pragmatic and flexible approach in their dealings with neighbouring states. Interestingly, such flexibility is also discernible in their dealings with subjected territories already situated within the Ottoman frontiers.53
— Ottoman frontiers in the early modern period —
THE SOUTHERN FRONTIER
One such territory was Yemen. Conquered between and , and reconquered in –, it remained under loose Ottoman control only until the early seventeenth century, to be conquered again in the nineteenth century.54 The Ottomans were very conscious of Yemen’s distant location, and service there was extremely unpopular among Ottoman soldiers.55 Numerous pious foundations, preserved today in Yemen, prove that the Ottoman governors tried hard to gain local support and popularity. In fact, the conquest of lowland Tihama, inhabited by Sunni Shafi‘i Muslims, went easily after the Ottomans eliminated the local Tahirid dynasty. Yet, in the mountainous north they encountered the Zaydi imams, who claimed their own leadership over the people of Islam, and sometimes even the caliphate. Robert Serjeant, commenting on the troubles experienced in Yemen by all foreign invaders, from the Abbasids to the Egyptians in the s, observed that ‘one broad pattern easily discerned is the entry of foreign conquerors from the lowlands, their initial success but ultimate inability to conquer the northern highlands and their eventual retreat’. 56 An early seventeenthcentury English traveller claimed that the Ottomans kept , soldiers in Yemen fighting ‘continuously in the field against the Arab king in the mountains’.57 To quote a modern French scholar, it was ‘la rencontre de deux légitimités’.58 Ottoman Turkish as well as pro-Ottoman Arab chroniclers employed a rich vocabulary to prove the legitimacy of Ottoman claims to Yemen and to discredit and ‘dehumanize’ the enemy. The Zaydi imamate forces were referred to as ‘bastards’ ( haramzadeler), ‘the enemies of religion’ (a‘da’ al-din), ‘heretics’ (ahl al-ilhad), ‘idle troops of
The mountain fortress of Thula, seat of the sixteenth-century Yemeni leader Imam al-Mutahhar. The mountain visible behind the walled town is topped with a fort provided with cisterns and a subterranean granary. The fortress proved off-limits for Ottoman troops of the period, even though they were equipped with heavy guns. © marcus wilson-smith/Alamy.
Figure .
— Dariusz Kołodziejczyk —
the devilish army’ (jaysh al-batil min al-jundi’l-shaytani) and, perhaps most typically, ‘insects’ (hasharat).59 Yet, sooner or later subsequent Ottoman commanders learned that Yemen was unconquerable. Then another policy and language had to be adopted. The pro-Ottoman Arab chronicler al-Nahrawali related the negotiations following the futile seven-month siege of the Yemeni fortress of Kawkaban by the Ottoman army between September and April . After negotiations began, the Ottoman pasha entrusted his scribe with writing a letter to the local Zaydi commander, Muhammad bin Shams al-Din, addressing him as ‘my brother’ ( ya akhi) and notifying him that, though the Ottomans ‘are not in need of these lands’, since they ‘rule most thepasha inhabited world’, should stillbut be will obeyed. Therefore, the scribe,ofthe ‘will not rejectthey your request stipulate that thecontinued sermon and 60 currency (khutba wa sikka) be in the name of the sultan’. In the subsequent negotiations, Muhammad bin Shams al-Din was granted attributes of power: a standard and an imperial diploma (berat), according to whose tenor he admitted his error and prostrated himself before the Ottoman might, allowing the Ottoman pasha to ‘make him subject to pacts and agreements and impose on him conditions and limits’. 61 In short, he was granted his own lands by the Ottoman sultan on the sole condition that he would officially accept Ottoman suzerainty. Similar agreement was then made with Muhammad’s uncle, Imam al-Mutahhar.62
Figure . Shahara: suspended bridge leading to a mountain village-fortress, from which
Imam al-Qasim successfully defied the Ottoman sultan’s claim to control northern Yemen in the early seventeenth century. © Jack Jackson, Getty Images.
— Ottoman frontiers in the early modern period —
The pacification of Yemen did not last long, and soon another Zaydi pretender, Imam al-Qasim, rebelled. He concluded peace treaties with several Ottoman pashas, in , and .63 His territories first encompassed only the mountain fortress of Shahara, but then also Sa‘ada and al-Hayma. His son, Imam al-Mu‘ayyad, continued the struggle against the Ottomans, and by the last Ottoman garrisons evacuated Yemen. Paradoxically, ‘at no time did [the Ottomans] abdicate their sovereign rights over the land, for Yemenis still looked to them and their agents for protection’ against foreign – especially European – danger: ‘ironically, the imam sought autonomy only’.64 Yemen was not alone. Baki quotes rights, a document of Süleyman , granting hereditary rule, Tezcan land property tax exemptions, andfrom wide around autonomy to the Kurdish emirs in return for their loyalty to the Ottomans. The document is referred to as a mu‘ahede (identical with an‘ahdname, granted also to foreign rulers) and is corroborated by the sultan’s solemn oath. 65 Some Kurdish territories, which retained their autonomy until the nineteenth century, were situated deep inside the Ottoman domains and hence cannot be labelled as frontier zones. There were many more Muslim local rulers whose position was analogous. The Crimean khans, the sherifs of Mecca, Caucasian lords and some provincial notables, such as the Lebanese Ma‘ns, enjoyed local autonomy long before the eighteenth-century era of the ayans. These minor rulers were often accused of duplicity as the Ottomans never accepted their full sovereignty.66 Muslim Yemeni Arabs were labelled similarly to Christian Montenegrins, as ‘mountain bandits’ (eşkiya-i cebeliye).67 Maps depicting the early modern Ottoman empire also tend to leave a false impression that the Ottomans controlled much larger territories than they actually did. Did such desert lands as Fezzan, Nubia and Arabia really belong to the Ottoman empire? Or, rather, should the Ottoman control of these lands be compared with their ‘control’ of the seas? After the final Ottoman conquest of Crete in , the Ottomans and Venetians agreed that sea waters belonged to a fortress within cannon range. On the other hand, the Ottomans claimed full control of the Sea of Marmara, the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, the Red Sea, and large sections of the eastern Mediterranean, though this control was often problematic in practice. 68 REAL AND IMAGINED FRONTIERS
At first glance, Poland and Yemen do not seem to have much in common within the Ottoman worldview. Yet, at critical points in the seventeenth century, their history was interrelated. Haji ‘Ali, the contemporary Ottoman chronicler of the last decades of Ottoman rule in Yemen, describes how in the Ottoman governor Fazli Paşa waited desperately for reinforcements from Istanbul. chronicler explainsII,that no help could arrive because of the janissary rebellion andThe the murder of Osman which was an indirect result of the latter’s unsuccessful Hotin campaign against Poland– Lithuania in .69 When assistance finally arrived, it was probably too late, and the province was evacuated by . In the Porte contemplated a reconquest of Yemen.70 Again, these plans were frustrated by a more urgent campaign against Poland. There was another element that linked Yemen and Poland: their rulers concluded peace treaties with the Porte and obtained ‘ahdnames from the Ottoman sultans. One
— Dariusz Kołodziejczyk —
is tempted to ask, somewhat provocatively: what makes a modern historian resolve that Yemen lay inside the Ottoman empire, while Poland – and perhaps Venice as well – lay outside? If judged by Ottoman propaganda, their rulers – the Yemeni imam, the Polish king and the Venetian doge – were all Ottoman vassals. If judged by the realities, all these countries preserved sovereignty but could not entirely ignore Ottoman diplomatic pressure and military threats. Ottoman influence was at best disputable, often negligible, though at times the rulers concerned knew how to use the Ottoman ‘umbrella’ against their other enemies. Analogously, one could ask why modern historical maps depict the Kurdish principalities, as Bitlis,byasstripes ‘regular’ Ottoman lands, while theInCrimean khanate cenand Moldavia such are depicted signifying their autonomy? the seventeenth tury all their rulers received Ottoman berats, confirming their position. It seems that the more one studies the Ottoman realities, the more ‘stripes’ one sees. Like any other early modern rulers, the Ottoman sultans faced constant challenges to their legitimacy as distributors of justice, providers of security, and – last but not least – Muslim gazis. Negotiation with his own subjects, not just with external monarchs, was a part of the sultan’s métier. We have tried to demonstrate the difference between the ‘imagined Ottoman frontiers’, promoted by Ottoman propaganda and reaching to the furthest corners of the inhabited world, and the real borders of Ottoman control, sometimes meticulously demarcated, sometimes not. Yet, there is one more aspect. In the models of boundary development formulated by Febvre and Sahlins, both authors stress the importance of emotional attitude towards one’s own territory and its borders, characteristic of the third, most ‘advanced’ stage. Did the Ottomans have any emotional attitude towards their borders? Where did they feel ‘at home’? Certainly not in Yemen, labelled as the ‘tomb of the Turks’.71 Not in Podolia, where Ottoman soldiers cured their homesickness with opium and vodka, as evidenced by a poem left by one garrison member.72 Interestingly, Ottoman Hungary was not considered a proper Ottoman land either, though it was directly ruled for almost one and a half centuries and densely garrisoned. The Ottoman chronicler Selaniki recorded a reported comment by the grand vezir Mehmed Sokollu upon returning from the Szigetvár campaign in . Having crossed the River Sava, he announced: ‘from now on it is again the inner land’ (şimden gerü iç-il dir). In the French translation of Gilles Veinstein, the phrase sounds even more persuasive: ‘ maintenant, nous sommes rentrés chez nous’.73 For the seventeenth-century Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi, not only Ottoman Hungary, but even Bosnia, situated on the ‘hither’ – i.e., southern – shore of the Sava, 74 constituted the borderland, extending between Belgrade and the Habsburg lands. Moreover, in an Ottoman fiscal official from Uyvar reported the necessity of importinghisiron from another Ottoman Varadthe (today in Romania), assuring superiors that transport was fortress, easy although roadOradea passed through nonMuslim regions. Stein, who studied this report, concluded that the term ‘non-Muslim regions’ must refer to Transylvania.75 Notwithstanding the fact that the ruler of Transylvania was an Ottoman vassal, maps show that the road from Varad to Uyvar did not run through Transylvania, but through the Ottoman provinces of Eger and Buda. Referring to them as ‘non-Muslim regions’ sounds quite odd and must reflect either the geographic ignorance of the writer or his feeling of alienation in ‘outer’ Ottoman provinces, apparently exotic for a Turkish-speaking Muslim newcomer.
— Ottoman frontiers in the early modern period —
It now seems that the borders of the ‘Ottoman world’ ran closer to the imperial centre than the furthest extent of Ottoman military conquests, and certainly much closer than the extent of Ottoman imperial claims. The Ottomans certainly tried to domesticate the surrounding space. Mushrooming foundations of mosques, hammams, or simply fountains, built in the ‘Istanbuli’ style from Podolia to Yemen and from Algiers to Azov, not only served the imperial propaganda or self-promotion of their founders, but helped them to become accustomed to new surroundings, climate, customs and language encountered on the street – in short, to start feeling at home. NOTES * A preliminary version of this essay, entitled ‘Do universal empires have frontiers? An Ottoman case’, was presented in Warsaw in October at the mid-term meeting of the international research project ‘Tributary empires compared: Romans, Ottomans, Mughals, and beyond’, sponsored by the COST programme (European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research). The author also wishes to thank the Andrew W. Mellon East and Central European Fellowship Program for enabling him to conduct short-term research at the American Institute for Yemeni Studies in Sana‘a. Hardt and Negri : . Kieniewicz : . Hay : –. Pedani : . Heywood : –. Ibid.: , . Heywood : –. Panaite : ; Heywood : ; Kołodziejczyk : , , , , , , , , (for Maghreb); Kołodziejczyk : pt. I, , . Mawardi : ; French trans. : . Ágoston : . Kołodziejczyk . Davison : . Turner ; Abou-el-Haj . Abou-el-Haj : , and n. . Kołodziejczyk : –; Veinstein a: ; but see Heywood : . Pedani : . Gherardi : ; Marsili ; Stoye : –. Febvre : –; English trans. : –. Sahlins : –, , . Ibid.: –. Ibid.: –, –. Ibid.: , . Gemil . Bey: [] –: Kılıçof: Feridun Blackburn . Also the–; province Lahsa–. (al-Hasa) in the Persian Gulf was regarded as a frontier bulwark against the Portuguese and Safavids (Mandaville : ). Orhonlu : , , facs. . On the still under-researched south-eastern Ottoman provinces, see Özbaran and Casale . But see Peacock , which appeared too late to be taken into account in the writing of the current essay. Although a number of articles in that collective volume intend to fill the gap, some by means of archaeological surveys, Peacock nonetheless admits in his introduction that, although ‘the Ottomans’ frontiers with the Hapsburgs are quite well known [. . .], the Otto-
— Dariusz Kołodziejczyk —
man frontier with the Safavids and the Russians has been much less studied [. . .], while the Ottoman frontier with the Funj is almost entirely unknown’ (Peacock , ). On Ottoman Hungary, see also the essay by Gabor Ágoston, chapter in this volume. Hess . Blaškovic : map I. Kabrda : –. Stein : , . Kołodziejczyk : –, – and map . In a letter to his envoy in Rome, the Polish king John III Sobieski mockingly compared Ottoman negotiating methods with the aggressive style of Louis XIV: letter to Michał Kazimierz Archiwumdated Radziwiłł Radziwiłłów, in Jaworów dział onIII, listy August Jana; III Sobieskiego, Warsaw, Archiwum sygn. .Główne I wouldAkt likeDawnych, to thank Kirill Kocegarov for drawing my attention to this fragment. Kołodziejczyk : –, – and map . Sahlins : . Kołodziejczyk : . Ibid.: . The Turkish protocol invokes the saying of a Polish commissioner: ‘God (may He be exalted!) has separated the lands of Moldavia from our Polish lands by the River Dniester’, while in the Polish protocol, composed in Latin, the same sentence reads: Inter nos et Valachiam ipse Deus flumine Tyra dislimitavit (Kołodziejczyk : –, – and map ). Strikingly similar wording was used in by a member of the Aragonese Cortes, who maintained that ‘God created the Pyrenees to free the Spaniards from the French’ (Sahlins : ). Also the famous phrase ‘Il n’y a plus de Pyrénées! ’, reportedly exclaimed by Louis XIV after the death of the last Spanish Habsburg, fits perfectly within the above context. Sobieski to Radziwiłł, dated in Jaworów on August (see note above). A methodological proposal for solving the apparent contrast between linear and cyclical narra-
tives of formulated Koselleck(political, (: –), who psychological, stressed the uneven pace of history change was in various areasby of Reinhard human experience economic, etc.) and the simultaneous presence of different ‘time strata’ in any given period. The srcinal Ottoman document, drawn up in January and confirmed in February by Grand Vezir Kara Mustafa Paşa, is held in Moscow, Rossijskij gosudarstvennyj arxiv drevnix aktov, fond , opis , no. . The sultan’s ‘ahdname, confirming the peace conditions, was issued in Edirne in late April or early May ; see ibid., fond , opis , no. ; Feridun Bey [] –: –, contains another copy. Ne inymi znakami, no tokmo [. . .] na six pismax tu granicu [esmy] utverdili; the Russian text is published in Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossijskoj imperii, s goda, vol. IV: – (St Petersburg, : –, esp. ); the contemporary Italian translation reads: questo stabilimento non l’habbiamo determinato con montoni o qualch’altri segni, ma solamente con quest’instrumento di scrittura; cf. Paris, Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Mémoires et
documents, Turquie, tome , fol. a–b, esp. a. ‘Spisok s statejnago spiska Velikago Gosudarja Ego Carskago Velicestva poslannikov: stol’nika i polkovnika i namestnika perejaslavskogo Vasil’ja Mixajlova syna Tjapkina, d’jaka Nikity Zotova’, ed. N. Murzakevic, in Zapiski Odesskago obšcˇestva istorii i drevnostej, vol. , otdelenie vtoroe. i tretie (): –, esp. . Ibid., William McNeill’s ‘Turnerian’ approach, crediting the successful taming and colonization of the Black Sea steppe for the rise of the Russian empire, is very convincing in this respect (McNeill ). Nevertheless, his treatment of Hungary as a part of the East European steppe was vehemently and with good reason opposed by Hungarian scholars (Dávid and Fodor : xxii). It is precisely the difference between Hungary and the Black Sea steppe that resulted in the different character of Ottoman borders with the Habsburgs and Russia. In India, dense forests played an analogous role to steppes, deserts or mountains in the Otto-
— Ottoman frontiers in the early modern period —
man context, preventing the expansion of early Muslim states in Bengal (Eaton : xxiv). Tayeb : –. Kołodziejczyk : – and facsimile XXIVa–e. Kołodziejczyk : pt. , –, –; pt. , –. Ibid.: pt. , . Venice, Archivio di Stato, Documenti turchi, busta , doc. ; cf. Pedani a: , no.; on the Ottoman chancery efforts to conceal the effects of military failure in , see Kołodziejczyk . Whittaker : . Öz : . Farah . al-Maddah []: ; Soudan : . Serjeant and Lewcock : . Bidwell : . Blukacz : ; Van Donzel : –. The epithet haramzadeler was constantly used by the sixteenth-century Ottoman chronicler Rumuzi (Hathaway : –). All the remaining epithets are taken from the Arabic chronicle of his Hijazi contemporary al-Nahrawali (al-Nahrawali [] : , , and ; English trans. : , , – translated by Smith as ‘devilish troops of the false army’ – and ); on hasharat, see also Farah : . al-Nahrawali [] : ; English trans. : . Ibid.: –; English trans. : –. Ibid.: –; English trans. : –. Soudan : ; Yahya bin al-Husayn, the seventeenth-century Yemeni chronicler and grandson of Imam al-Qasim, referred to all these treaties as al-sulh, a term equally fitting to the domestic or international ‘peace’; see Yahya bin al-Husayn, Gayat al-amani fi akhbari’l-qutri’lyamani (Cairo, [] ), pt. , , , .
Farah .. See also the essay by Nelida Fuccaro, chapter in this volume. Tezcan: :,, Matthee : –. Analogously, the Tatars, Moldavians and Ukrainian Cossacks were often labelled as ‘traitors’ by the Ottoman, Polish and Russian authorities, each claiming to be their sovereign. Reinkowski : , n. . Pedani : – and ; Kołodziejczyk . Haji ‘Ali, ‘Ahbarü’l-yamani,’ Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, MS Hamidiye , fol. a; cf. Hathaway : – and , n. . Hathaway : . From a proverb referring to Shahara, the mountain seat of Imam al-Qasim (d. ) (recorded in the Lonely Planet guidebook Arabian Peninsula, Hong Kong, , p. ). The poem by a certain Hasan was published from a British Library manuscript by Orhan Şaik Gökyay (); the term horülka, not known to Gökyay, was a Turkish loanword from the Ukrainian term for vodka. On the everyday life of garrison members in Ottoman Podolia, see Kołodziejczyk : –. Veinstein a: . Moac Steinanin :: . .
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DEFENDI NG AND ADM INISTE RING THE FRONTIER The case of Ottoman Hungary
Gábor Ágoston GEOPOLITICS AND THE CR EATION OF THE OTTOMANHABSBURG FRONTIER IN HUNGARY
O
n August , at the battle of Mohács in south-western Hungary, Sultan Süleyman’s army of , to , men annihilated the badly organized and obsolete Hungarian royal army of , to , men. The battle of Mohács proved one of the most important events in European history of the early sixteenth century, since it led to the direct confrontation of the Ottomans and Habsburgs, the two superpowers of the time in most East-Central Europe. King Louis IIof(–) Hungary Bohemia, along with of the magnates and prelates Hungary,ofperished in and the battle. Although the sultan had withdrawn from Hungary by the autumn of , his victory and the death of the childless Louis II led to major geopolitical upheaval in the region. Hungary was at the time an elective monarchy, and the competing Hungarian noble factions could not agree on a successor to Louis II. They thus elected two kings: János (John) Szapolyai (r. –), Hungary’s richest aristocrat and royal governor (vajda) of Transylvania, and Ferdinand of Habsburg (r. –), archduke of Austria and younger brother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (–). Szapolyai controlled the eastern parts of Hungary – with Ottoman military assistance – while Ferdinand ruled the country’s northern and western parts. Süleyman secured Ottoman influence over Hungary by stationing troops in southern Hungary and by supporting Szapolyai militarily against his Habsburg rival. When Szapolyai’s death ( or July ) and Ferdinand’s military campaigns (October and May–August ) to annex Szapolyai’s realms upset the military balance between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, Süleyman occupied central Hungary and its capital city, Buda (1 August ), which controlled the Danubian waterways leading to Central Europe. Buda became the centre of a newly established Ottoman province, the beylerbeyilik or vilayet of Budin, which remained the central Ottoman province in Hungary until it was reconquered by the Habsburgs in . Ferdinand’s attempt in to expel the Ottomans from Buda ended in humiliation, and lack of adequate commitment of Habsburg resources in the s turned the country into the main continental battleground between the two major empires of the age, the Ottomans and the Habsburgs.
— Defending and administering the Hungarian frontier —
Since eastern Hungary lay outside the main military route leading from Ottoman Belgrade through Budin to the Habsburg capital city of Vienna, the Ottomans did not consider its imminent conquest necessary. They left it, as Ottoman sancaks, under the control of Friar Georgius and Péter Petrovics, leaders of the pro-Ottoman Szapolyai party in Hungary. Although the status of these sancaks was somewhat ambiguous at first, it is significant that both Friar Georgius and Péter Petrovics were appointed by a berat, the usual type of certificate used for appointments of regular sancakbeyis (and some vassal rulers), rather than by ahdname or temessük, which were usually given to the beys of the hereditary sancaks in eastern Anatolia.2 Due to its strategic location,
sancak Péter Petrovics’s soon fell under direct rule, and inThis it became the second Ottoman province in Hungary, theOttoman process thus vilayet of Temeşvar. showed a gradual incorporation similar to that followed by the Ottomans both in the provinces of Dulkadır and Adana in southern Anatolia and in several sancaks of the eastern Anatolian beylerbeyilik of Erzurum. However, the sancak of Friar Georgius, which lay far to the east of the principal routes of Ottoman expansion in the west, evolved into an Ottoman vassal state, the Principality of Transylvania, which enjoyed considerable freedom regarding its domestic affairs. Ferdinand retained only the western and northern parts of the Hungarian kingdom, also known as Royal Hungary. The king and his Hungarian supporters faced the challenge of preventing further Ottoman inroads into Central Europe and protecting Habsburg hereditary lands and kingdoms. Since Vienna – which following Charles V’s abdication in also became the capital of the Holy Roman Empire – was dangerously close to the main Ottoman garrisons in Hungary, the Habsburgs fortified and manned their remaining forts in Hungary and Croatia, integrated them into their newly organized border defence system, and centralized and modernized their military, finances and bureaucracies.3 This Hungarian/Croatian border defence system was an integral part of a long defence line that the European powers built against the Ottomans and their Muslim vassals, stretching from the Spanish presidios of Algiers and Tunisia, through the islands of the Mediterranean, Dalmatia, Croatia, Hungary, Poland–Lithuania and Ukraine, to the Belgorod defence line of Muscovy. The tripartite division of the medieval kingdom of Hungary and the resulting geopolitical realities had major consequences for both imperial centres. In the Habsburgs’ Central European empire, the limits to imperial authority were most obvious in Hungary, the frontier charged with the task of halting further Ottoman expansion. Although Hungary depended on Vienna for its defence against the Ottomans, the Hungarian nobility was reluctant to give up its centuries-old rights and privileges with regard to the administration and financing of warfare. Vienna lacked appropriate funds and expertise to finance and operate the anti-Ottoman economicsystem defence and administrative alone, and was resources. thus dependent As a consequence, on the Hungarian the estatesestates not only andplayed their an important role in manning, supplying and administering the border forts, but also possessed a significant military force, and retained their control over countylevel administration.4 The estates’ position was further strengthened by Transylvania, which by had become an anti-Habsburg Hungarian stronghold and played a crucial role in protecting the privileges of the estates against Vienna’s absolutist and centralizing policies.
— Gábor Ágoston —
R. Dan ube
Vienna
H
A
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S
B
U
G
R
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Uyvar
Estergon Yanık
Visegrad Budin Peste Solnok
Vesprem L.
R .D ra va
Egri
Vac
Kanije
Istolni Belgrad
Varad
S
a
sz
i .T
T
T
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M
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V
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A
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R T
Segedin
R. Mar os
Sigetvar Mohac
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Temesvar
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es Tem R. R. Sa va
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Balaton
R. Mu ra
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R D anub e .
Belgrade N
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Map Ottoman Hungary
W
A
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A
— Defending and administering the Hungarian frontier —
PROVINCES, SUBPROVINCES AND GOVERNORS
After the conquest of Buda in , Istanbul’s main goal was to secure the province militarily and to organize its administration. To that end, the Istanbul government undertook several crucial steps. First, as in other provinces, Hungary’s conquered lands were divided into sub-provinces or districts (sancak) and into larger provinces (vilayet, beylerbeyilik), headed respectively by district and provincial governors – that is, sancakbeyis and beylerbeyis. Second, Istanbul also ordered the strengthening of the strategically important frontier forts and deployed significant numbers of salaried troops to man them. Third, the Ottomans carried out systematic cadastral surveys (tahrir) in order to estimate the revenues that the treasury could collect from its recently occupied lands. Fourth, cash revenues were paid to the salaried troops, while a good part of the revenue was allocated to the land-based cavalry forces as military fiefs (timar, zeamet and has) through the Ottoman prebendal timar system. Not counting the short-lived provinces of Yanık (–), Papa (–) and Sigetvar (–?), Ottoman Hungary was divided into six long-standing provinces: Budin (–), Temeşvar (–), Eğri (–), Kanije (–), Varad (–) and Uyvar (–). Initially, revenues from territories around Budin could not finance the new province. Consequently, several sancaks that lay at a great distance from Budin to the south of the River Drava were made subordinate to the beylerbeyi of Budin. Following new conquests closer to Budin, new sancaks were established, and the number of these subdivisions under the command of the governor of Budin grew from ten in to twenty in . Further conquests and the creation of new provinces resulted
sancakprovinces in administrative adjustments. Severalcreated s srcinallyofbelonging the province of Budin were attached to the newly Temeşvarto(Semendire and Alacahisar), Eğri (Solnok, Hatvan, Segedin and Filek) and Kanije (Peçuy, Sigetvar and Pojega).5 Compared to the much larger Balkans, which until the creation of the beylerbeyilik of Bosna in was governed by a single governor, the beylerbeyi of Rumeli, the number of provinces and sancaks established in Hungary seems rather high. This density of administrative subdivisions can be explained in part by the geostrategic location of Ottoman Hungary. As the empire’s key military frontier in Central Europe, standing face to face with the Habsburg arch-enemy, this region required a large concentration of forts and garrisons, and thus of provincial and district governors to command these troops. These Ottoman administrative strategies were not unique to Hungary; similar patterns can be observed along the empire’s eastern frontiers during its gradual expansion.6 In fact, the process of increasing the number of provinces and sub-provinces was an empire-wide phenomenon under Süleyman, aimed partly at consolidating Ottoman rule in newly conquered territories. In the s, in the empire as a whole, there were eight provinces consisting of some ninety sancaks. By the s, these numbers had grown to twenty-four and , respectively. The fluctuation in the number of sub-provinces and the practice of transferring their administration from older to newly established provinces was also a general administrative technique, observable in other frontier regions of the empire. 7 The geographical distribution of sancaks in Hungary reflected geostrategic considerations but was also shaped by existing geographical conditions. Both the Ottomans
— Gábor Ágoston —
and the Habsburgs built and reinforced their forts along major rivers and in the hills of Transdanubia and northern Hungary. The Ottomans established nine sancaks in the territories to the west of the Danube and six along their northern border, in regions which faced Habsburg Hungary and thus were heavily dotted with forts and garrisons. On the other hand, there were only two sancaks in the much larger but better protected region between the Danube and Tisza rivers. Five sancaks were formed in the trans-Tisza region and around the castles of the rivers Temes and Maros, while only two were established in the Hungarian Great Plain, a large area poor in forts.8 Of the six provinces, Budin, Kanije and Uyvar were the main bases for further Ottoman expansion the ofHabsburgs andborder. faced the strongest garrisons on theagainst other side the military Their strategicHungarian/Habsburg significance affected the size and composition of their garrisons, weaponry and equipment, as well as the everyday life of the soldiers and their families. As part of a larger Ottoman strategy of burden-sharing, the government expected the frontier authorities to meet most of the costs relating to the maintenance of their respective border regions from local revenue sources. Thus Istanbul designated part of the sancak’s agricultural revenues as fiefs ( timar, zeamet and has) to be assigned to cavalrymen (sipahi) and to their military commanders, the sancakbeyis. Timar revenues assigned to ordinary sipahis usually yielded a revenue up to , akçe annually; zeamets were usually remunerated officers and yielded an annual sum between , and , akçe, although the upper limit could be and often was considerably higher, in rare cases reaching up to , akçe.9 High officials, such as sancakbeyis and beylerbeyis, were remunerated by has prebends, which yielded over , akçe revenue annually. In the sixteenth century, the starting salary for sancakbeyis in the European part of the empire was , akçe. The best paid sancakbeyis along this frontier often received has grants yielding , akçe or more annually, and some managed to obtain prebends worth as much as , akçe per annum. Ali Bey and Mehmed Bey, who held the post of sancakbeyi of Sigetvar in – and – respectively, were compensated with has prebends worth , akçe, while the hases of Sinan Bey, sancakbeyi of Gyula (–), were reported to yield , akçe. However, these figures reflected the nominal or estimated value of the hases to which the sancakbeyis were entitled; the actual, collectable income was probably much less. Although the case of Sinan Bey might be unique, it is worth noting that, while he was entitled to a nominal has of , akçe, he managed to lay claim to only , akçe – that is, less than half of his nominal revenue.10 These figures illustrate the everyday realities along the frontier, where, following the slowing down of conquests in the latter part of the sixteenth century, offices and revenues were more difficult to come by than in mid-century, and officers and officials were less military revenue than they entitled of to. the sipahi cavalry forces in In content additionwith to his service as were commander his sancak, the sancakbeyi was responsible for maintaining law and order within his sub-province with the help of the timariot sipahis under his command. He and the judge (kadı) of the sancak were responsible for collecting taxes, managing revenues, and assisting the officials appointed by Istanbul to carry out taxation surveys ( tahrir). Surveys were done in a new sancak, and repeated every ten to thirty years or so to reflect changes in the size and composition of the population and the economic situation in the region, according to which facts taxes were then levied. One copy of the
— Defending and administering the Hungarian frontier —
survey remained in the province, while the other was sent to the imperial capital and was archived near the imperial council so that it could be consulted whenever needed. These surveys, along with the provincial law codes ( kanunname) that summarized tax regulations and the registers that contained recordings of bestowals of military fiefs, testify to the Ottoman government’s capabilities regarding data collection and processing. Of the tahrir surveys compiled in Hungary, the most famous were the survey books of the sancaks of the province of Budin, prepared by a certain Halil Bey in . Known in contemporary Hungarian parlance as ‘Halil Bey’s defters’, these surveys were often consulted during later border disputes, for all concerned parties regarded which had been included HalilOttoman Bey’s surveys as settlements under Ottomanvillages rule and taxation. When in laterinyears officials tried to include further villages in these defters, the Hungarian and Habsburg authorities protested vehemently, considering such attempts as an unlawful expansion of Ottoman influence. In Ottoman Hungary the authorities prepared further tahrirs in – and in the s, as well as a complete survey of all the sancaks of the vilayet of Budin in , which they repeated in / and /. The last tahrirs of the province of Temeşvar date from . Surveys compiled after / and / are often unchanged copies of earlier registers, and thus have limited value for economic and demographic studies, except for the first survey books of newly established provinces – such as those of Uyvar in – which were prepared with care.11 After the conquest of Buda in , the Ottomans had only limited financial resources at their disposal in their newly conquered territory and had to rely on revenues from faraway lands. As indicated above, the has revenues assigned to the first two governors of Budin, Süleyman Paşa (–) and Bali Paşa (–), lay more than kilometres south of their seat, and were scattered in the sancaks of Pojega, Semendire, Vidin, İzvornik and Alacahisar. Furthermore, Bali Paşa’s relatively high income of ,, akçe came from nineteen different financial resources, of which only two had previously been has prebends. The remaining seventeen revenue blocks had been zeamets and timars, and were turned into hases in order to pay Bali Paşa. Since the villages and other settlements assigned to him were poor, his has comprised more than settlements. Later, as the Ottomans consolidated their administration and revenue management in Hungary, the hases granted to the Budin pashas lay closer to Budin, and by the s all were located north of the Sava river. By , more than per cent of Rüstem Paşa’s , akçe revenue came from his own Budin sancak, and by this figure had risen to per cent, reaching almost half a million akçe. This amount of revenue from the sancak of Budin remained more or less constant to the end of the sixteenth century. Since Rüstem Paşa’s successors collected between , and ,, akçe annually from their has prebends, this meant that the pashas of of their Budin amassed12 some to per cent of their income from the central province. sancak During years of Ottoman rule, seventy-six beylerbeyis served in Buda, and, since several of them held the post more than once, the total number of appointments is about one hundred. The longest-serving governor was Sokolluzade Mustafa Paşa, who held his post for twelve years (–) thanks largely to the protection of his uncle, the grand vezir Sokollu Mehmed Paşa (–). Two more Sokollus, Gazi Ferhad Paşa (–) and Şehid Hasan Paşa (–), who were appointed after the execution of the grand vezir in and thus could not count on his support, served
— Gábor Ágoston —
much shorter periods. Mustafa Paşa was also the first beylerbeyi of Budin to be granted the rank of vezir, in . Among his successors only a few attained this title, at least until the s, when because of the depreciation of titles, almost all the pashas of Budin were also vezirs. With his new title, Mustafa Paşa’s yearly revenues increased to ,, akçe. This was the largest known has revenue given to a Budin governor in the sixteenth century, and was a twentyfold increase in Mustafa’s annual salary since the start of his career on the Hungarian frontier two decades previously, when he had earned , akçes yearly as defter kethüdası (keeper of prebend registers/records) in Temeşvar in . He converted most of his wealth into religious endowments
vakıfsecondary (two ), which schools paid for(medrese the upkeep of four congregational smallerbathhouses mosques, ), twelve hostels for travellers,and andsixsixteen 13 whose construction the pasha had commissioned. Sokollu Mustafa Paşa was also instrumental in reducing the deficit in the provincial treasury, which dated from the beginning of Ottoman rule. In , local revenues covered only per cent of the pay of the garrison forces guarding this frontier province. However, by the late s, the province had become largely self-sufficient. It remained so for about a decade, meeting the expectation of Istanbul that each province would cover as much of its expenses as possible. Between and , the province’s revenue (a ten-year annual average of million akçe) covered per cent of the soldiers’ pay (a ten-year annual average of . million akçe). The rise in revenue can be explained partly by a substantial increase in territory following Süleyman’s conquests of (the capture of Szigetvár and Gyula) and the resulting expansion and consolidation of Ottoman taxation in Hungary by the end of the s. Improved taxation and financial management under Sokollu Mustafa Paşa and his successor, Kara14 Üveys Paşa (–), also played a major role in balancing the province’s budgets. This achievement of Ottoman administration was particularly remarkable when compared with the situation in Royal Hungary under the Habsburgs, where incomes hardly covered to per cent of defence-related expenses. The Habsburgs regularly depended on financial aid from the Holy Roman Empire and from their Austrian Hereditary Lands.15 However, from the end of the sixteenth century, the beylerbeyilik of Budin again ran a deficit, and became dependent on financial aid from the neighbouring province of Temeşvar; in the seventeenth century, the bulk of financial aid came once more from distant Balkan sancaks. These financial difficulties were not exceptional, for by the second half of the sixteenth century several frontier provinces of the empire were unable to pay their garrisons and finance the defence of their respective frontiers from local sources. The situation was especially dire in the eastern border provinces of Basra and Baghdad, which faced the Safavids. As in the case of Budin, Istanbul tried to finance the deficit neighbouring landsof16 these border provinces also with the help of the more prosperous The financial difficulties of the frontier affected everyone, from ordinary soldiers, whose pay lagged behind, to sancakbeyis and beylerbeyis, who had to be content with less revenue than was their due or with revenues assigned to them along the dangerous border regions, or even in territories which lay beyond the Hungarian forts in Hungarian-controlled lands. The aforementioned Sinan, sancakbeyi of Gyula, was not the only high Ottoman official in Hungary who could collect only part of the revenue he was entitled to. For example, in Mehmed Bey, the first sancakbeyi of the newly
— Defending and administering the Hungarian frontier —
established sancak of Vesprem, was given has revenues which on paper had a nominal value of , akçe. However, according to previous Ottoman survey books, the villages from which Mehmed had the right to collect his revenues yielded much less, and thus the sancakbeyi could realistically expect to collect less than half this sum (, akçe). While it is not known how much Mehmed managed to squeeze out of his taxpaying peasants, one suspects that it was not the sancakbeyi, but rather his reaya, who paid the price for Istanbul’s financial machinations.17 There are several reasons why sancakbeyis and other officials accepted prebends with lower real value than they were entitled to. Having an office meant stable revenue and, perhaps more importantly, thelocal opportunity toItenhance that revenue throughtotaxation, gifts and participation in the economy. also offered the opportunity build and strengthen further one’s network of supporters, amassing political and social capital, which then also translated to more revenue, as the examples presented in the last section of this chapter will illustrate. DEFENDING THE BORDER: FORTS AND GARRISONS
Each Ottoman province in Hungary was guarded by one or two major forts with , to , soldiers in each, several smaller second-tier forts with garrisons numbering to soldiers, and much smaller, third-tier castles, usually parkans and palankas, in which typically fewer than troops served. The number of forts in Ottoman hands grew steadily, from twenty-nine in to sixty-one in , and to about by the mid-seventeenth century. Most of the castles had srcinally been built by the Hungarians and Habsburgs, with relatively minor architectural updates carried out by the Ottomans. The few new castles built by the Ottomans in Hungary were palanka or parkan.18 In the Ottomans stationed , to , soldiers, including Janissaries of the Porte, in their twenty-nine forts in Hungary. As figure . shows, this number rose to about , to , men by and , men in the s, following new conquests and the establishment of several new provinces. In the s, around , local troops and , Janissaries of the Porte served in the now six Ottoman provinces in Hungary, giving a total of , men.19 Following the Ottoman conquests, most Hungarian nobles and aristocrats left their possessions in Ottoman Hungary and fled to the kingdom’s northern and western parts under Habsburg rule. With help from Vienna, they strengthened the remaining forts in their possession and were integrated into the Habsburg defence system. In the s and s, some , Hungarian/Habsburg soldiers guarded the entire border, a force comparable in size and composition to the Ottoman garrison troops in Hungary as a whole. The, newkilometres, crescent-shaped Hungarian–Croatian–Habsburg defence line stretched some from the Adriatic Sea to northern and north-eastern Hungary, comprising to large and small forts and watchtowers in the late sixteenth century and, as a result of losses to the Ottomans, some eighty to ninety forts in the seventeenth. The strategically significant sections of the Hungarian border were heavily fortified. In , the important section, kilometres long, between Muraköz Region (the area between the rivers Drava and Mura in southern Hungary, now Međimurje in northern Croatia) and Murány was protected by sixty garrisons, which meant fifteen forts per kilometre section.20 Unlike Ottoman gar
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risons in Hungary, whose military strength increased in the seventeenth century, the Hungarian/Habsburg castles had fewer soldiers in the seventeenth century than previously. This was due to financial constraints and multiple Habsburg military commitments, as well as to the complicated and often strained relationship between Vienna and its Hungarian nobles, who often rebelled against the absolutist policies of their Habsburg rulers. In , following the long Ottoman–Habsburg war of –, in the forts of the four border areas (Grenzgebiet) or captaincy-generals, , Hungarian and , German soldiers served, which gives a total of , men. According to official accounts, their number decreased to , men in . However, even theseInwere paper numbers, and it seems that thousandscomplained of men werethat missing the forts. a memorandum, Miklós Eszterházy there from were palatinus only , Hungarian and , German soldiers serving in the border forts of the Hungarian defence line. Their number continued to decrease during the rest of the century: to , men in and to , men in .21 The figures given in figure . do not include the Ottoman cavalrymen or sipahis remunerated through timar prebends, whose number is difficult to estimate due to the fragmentary nature of the relevant timar registers. Also missing are the private armies of the beylerbeyis and sancakbeyis, who often had under their command more troops than their revenues required them to pay. On the Hungarian side, the figures exclude the soldiers serving in the private armies (banderia) of the Hungarian aristocrats. In the seventeenth century the importance of such private armies increased substantially, for the Hungarian nobility had to assume a larger share of the burden of defence in order to compensate for the diminishing number of garrison soldiers paid by the Viennese 1683
11,991
1661 1660s 1641 1630s 1630s 1620s 1607 1593 1591 1582 1576 1572 1569 1556 1545–47
14,094 24,000 16,882 16,381 14,931 21,000 18,192 22,693 20,000 21,148 22,513 19,861 20,000 13,982 15,000 0
5000
10000
Ottoman
15000
20000
25000
30000
Habsburg/Hungarian
Figure . Ottoman and Hungarian/Habsburg garrison troops in border forts
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
— Defending and administering the Hungarian frontier —
government. Recent estimates put the number of these troops in Hungary at about , to , in the seventeenth century.22 It should also be noted that most of the sources upon which the above estimates are based are treasury accounts and pay registers, which, in addition to human error, often reflect the paper rather than the actual numbers of soldiers. It was a general practice throughout Europe to keep missing soldiers on payroll so that the soldiers’ officers and comrades could cash their pay. However, despite the limitations of our sources, some trends regarding troop size and composition can be detected. One noticeable trend is the fact that the number of Ottoman garrison soldiers usually fell considerably as the Ottomans consolidated their rule in theforts new in province. Theofnumber of soldiers in the four most important Ottoman frontier the vilayet Budin had decreased by per cent between and and by an additional per cent by the s, militarily a relatively inactive period (see table .). Another feature of the Ottoman frontier was that the garrisons of the strategically most important forts contained substantial numbers of central Janissaries paid by Istanbul. However, as the Ottomans managed to man the newly conquered forts with local troops (often transferred from other parts of the frontier), the number of central troops decreased. In Kanije, for instance, by there were , local troops, whose number increased to about , in –. At the same time, the number of Istanbul Janissaries dropped from , in to in .23 A similar trend occurred in Uyvar. The most important forts were also better fortified and had more weaponry. Of the cannons and , handguns listed in the castles of the vilayet of Budin in , cannon ( per cent) and , handguns ( per cent) were in the province’s three key forts, Budin, Estergon and İstolni Belgrad. 24 The number of weapons does not seem very large, especially if we compare the above figures with the cannons listed in a weapons inventory of the castle of Belgrade.25 Thus it is hardly surprising that the Ottomans increased the number of their cannon in Hungary and deployed substantial numbers of weapons in their key forts, especially just after conquest, while also making good use of all the available arms found in newly captured forts. For example, after its conquest in , Uyvar had guns and , cannon balls of various sizes. Of these, forty-three guns and , cannon balls were allocated to the fort following its capture. Another sixty-six guns and , cannon balls, described as ‘old’, were presumably left in the fortress by its Hungarian defenders. 26 Four days Table . Decrease in the number of Ottoman soldiers in frontier forts in the vilayet of Budin,
–
Garrison Budin , Peşte , Estergon , Istolni Belgrad , Total ,
%
% ,
, , , ,
% ,
, , ,
Source: Hegyi : .
% ,
, , ,
%
, ,
%
,
,
, , ,
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after its conquest, the campaign armoury also allocated to Uyvar , handguns, Tatar bows with , Tatar arrows, along with , unfinished stocks (kundak), as many of the muskets sent to Uyvar lacked stocks.27 The Ottomans also established cannon foundries (tophane) and gunpowder works (baruthane) in Hungary, as in other frontier provinces, in order to supply their frontier forts with weapons and ammunition. The gunpowder works in Budin produced some metric tons annually in the sixteenth century. Accumulated stocks of the local baruthane ranged between and metric tons. Other powder works in Hungary produced less than Budin, but they seem to have been able to meet local demand, and even assist imperial campaigns the and Habsburgs. The campaigns, cannon foundry of Budin alsotocast several cannon both foragainst local use for imperial mainly 28 basilisks which fired cannon balls between and kg. Forts along this frontier also needed upkeep and repairs as a result of long sieges (especially during the war of –) and frequent skirmishes. One of the most comprehensive repair efforts was undertaken by Murteza Paşa of Budin (–), at the pasha’s own expense. The work had two goals: first to strengthen the key forts facing the strongest Hungarian castles, and second to fortify the Belgrade–Budin section of the famous ‘royal road’ leading to Vienna. The first goal was achieved by repairing and strengthening the forts of Budin, Peşte, Estergon, Vaç, İstolni Belgrad, Palota, Eğri, Hatvan, Gyula and Kanije, while the second was met through repairs at the forts of Belgrad, Ilok, Varadin, Valkovar and Ösek, on the palanka of Erçi and on eight and six palankas of the sancaks of Koppan and Şimontorna, respectively, as well as on several bridges in the region.29 LIMITS TO SULTANIC AUTHO RITY AND THE HUNGAROOTTOMAN CONDOMINIUM
Geopolitical realities, most importantly the armed strength of the Hungarian border garrisons, substantially limited Istanbul’s authority with regard to administration, taxation and jurisdiction and led to condominium – that is, joint Hungarian– Ottoman rule and taxation. Most villages under Ottoman rule had two lords – an Ottoman sipahi and a Hungarian landlord – and paid taxes to both. Contemporaries considered the situation natural, as seen from a letter of the Ottoman dizdar of the castle of Koppan addressed to his Hungarian counterpart, Ádám Battyány, the commander of the Hungarian forces in southern Transdanubia: ‘Your village, Nagyegrös, is in my possession in Turkey, [however] it is in your possession in Hungary’. 30 As a consequence of this condominium, apart from the Serb-populated Syrmium in southern Hungary, there was hardly any part of Ottoman Hungary that was not paying taxes to the Hungarian side. Sincegarrisons the Hungarian landlords could mobilize military of the Hungarian border when demanding their dues fromthe their villagesforces now under Ottoman rule, they were the most successful in collecting taxes from Ottoman Hungary. State and church taxes, on the other hand, could be collected only from two-thirds of Ottoman-held territories in the sixteenth century and from only half in the seventeenth century. Stephan Gerlach, a Lutheran priest visiting Hungary in in the company of the Habsburg envoy to Istanbul, David Ungnad, was amazed at the loyalty of the Hungarian peasants who, though under Ottoman rule, continued to pay
— Defending and administering the Hungarian frontier —
their taxes to the Habsburg king and Hungarian lords. However, the good Lutheran priest was mistaken. It was not heartfelt allegiance to their king, church and native landlords that convinced the Hungarian peasants to continue paying taxes to the Hungarian side over and above the poll tax ( cizye) and tithe (öşr) they owed to the sultan and their sipahis.31 Rather, it was the military force of the Hungarian border forts. Besides taxation, the Hungaro-Ottoman condominium extended to jurisdiction and administration. The weakest of all the former Hungarian institutions which continued to exert some influence in Ottoman-ruled territories were the noble counties. Most fell apart shortly after the conquest, and the few remaining operated from Royal Hungary, being known as ‘refugee counties’. Theirnobility. work wasAlthough confinedthese to legal transactions between the members of the Hungarian counties passed regulatory decrees or statutes in any affair not governed (or insufficiently governed) by the laws and decrees of the kingdom, their role should not be overvalued, as they did not replace Ottoman authorities: ‘Even in the best of cases, Turkish jurisdiction was not squeezed out, but just squeezed back, for the Turks debated the same affairs, inasmuch as they had an interest in them’.32 Hungarian market towns in Ottoman-held lands were more successful than the counties in administering justice independently from the Ottoman authorities. In the handful of Ottoman garrison towns it was the kadı who administered justice. However, in the more numerous Hungarian market towns (sing. oppidum) that had no Ottoman garrison, kadıs were rare, and all had left these towns by the s. Thus, the task of maintaining law and order, crime prevention, inquiry and judgement remained the prerogatives of the local Hungarian authorities, for local Ottoman officials residing in faraway forts which also served as district and provincial centres were unable to fulfil these tasks. In this border zone, where raiding and pillaging were part of everyday life, robbers, criminals, marauding Hungarian and Ottoman soldiers, and German, Spanish or Italian mercenaries in Habsburg service posed a constant threat to these market towns, unprotected by walls or garrisons. This was especially true during and after the long war of –, which resulted in the total collapse of the traditional public safety agencies and thus led to the creation of various local self-defence mechanisms throughout Hungary. The surviving municipal records show that, in the decades following the Ottoman conquest, many towns in Ottoman Hungary had already obtained the right to pursue and arrest looting soldiers and other criminals, and to pass justice and even issue death sentences. Towns that lay closer to Royal Hungary or Transylvania but were still under Ottoman rule acquired these rights more swiftly than those located in the heart of Ottoman Hungary. Debrecen, one of the largest market towns in Hungary, with some , inhabitants in the second half of the seventeenth century, accepted Ottoman suzeraintyasand the land paying of an annual tribute of , in . The town was classified crown or sultanic its revenue wasakçe usually allocated has, and as ocaklık for the payment of the garrisons of Budin, Eğri, Solnok, and, following its conquest in , Varad. Less than ten years after its submission to the Ottomans, in , however, the town acquired from the pasha of Budin, Zal Mahmud, the right ‘to punish trouble-makers and malefactors according to their futile laws’. 33 The privilege included capital punishment, and municipal records demonstrate that the town repeatedly exercised these rights in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For towns which lay in territories that the Ottomans could better control, the process that led to
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fully fledged judicial autonomy lasted longer. These towns first acquired the right to pursue, capture and try in their own courts malefactors who harmed their citizens or caused damage to their property. At this early stage, however, many towns had to get permission from their respective sancakbeyis and kadıs to exercise these juridical rights. At a later stage, the towns obtained the right to hang convicted criminals, mostly robbers and looting soldiers, according to their own laws. In such cases, the Ottoman officials had no right to demand blood money. At a later stage still – for example, in the case of the Jász towns to the north of Ottoman Solnok only in the s and s – several market towns obtained the right to exercise these juridical rights over their own citizens and not just over foreign criminals and looting soldiers. In addition, these municipal authorities administered disputes concerning guilds, artisans and matters of 34 probate and imposed and collected fines. Although Istanbul initially rejected the idea that the Habsburgs and the Hungarian estates might collect taxes and administer justice in Ottoman-held areas, over time the armed strength of the Hungarian border garrisons made Hungarian taxation a day-to-day practice. Double taxation and the survival of pre-Ottoman institutions are also found enduring for varying periods of time in other areas of the empire that were never fully conquered or absorbed by the Ottomans and/or where the former elite could preserve its positions and strength in arms. Many such areas existed in the Balkans, in eastern Anatolia and in the Arab provinces. However, unlike in those areas, the condominium existed in Hungary throughout the Ottoman era. This was due to the survival of the former Hungarian political elite and its institutions in Royal Hungary under Habsburg rule. The Hungarian estates found refuge on the far side of the military border. From their base in Habsburg Hungary, with the assistance of the Hungarian border garrisons and the support of Habsburg diplomacy, the Hungarian estates were better able to defend their interests vis-à-vis Istanbul and its local representatives than many of the local power-holders in the Balkans, Anatolia or the Arab lands, who lacked such backing.35 MAKING A LIVING: REGIONALSOCIAL NETWORKS AN D EC ON OM IC OP PORT UNITI ES
The population of Hungary at the end of the fifteenth century is estimated at between . and . million people. Recent research has demonstrated that, contrary to earlier claims, the population did not decline following the Ottoman conquest in , and that until the devastating long war of – it even grew to about . million. Of this number, Royal Hungary had about . million inhabitants, Transylvania about , and the Ottoman-ruled central parts of the country some ,. 36 Of thetroops, , inhabitants ofmerchants Ottoman-ruled Hungary, thenumbered number ofprobably Ottomanabout garrison administrators, and their families ,. While earlier Hungarian historiography talked about Turks and Turkish rule in the country, it is obvious from our sources that the overwhelming majority of Ottomans in Hungary came from the Balkans. Many of the governors of the Hungarian provinces were natives of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Albania, although, especially in the seventeenth century, we find several pashas of Abkhazian, Circassian and Georgian
— Defending and administering the Hungarian frontier —
srcin. Most members of the Ottoman religious establishment ( ulema) serving in the administration in Hungary as judges (kadı) and jurist and jurisconsults (mufti), or in mosques, schools (mekteb and medrese), and dervish convents or lodges (tekke, zaviye), also came from the Balkans.37 The Balkans, especially Bosnia and Serbia, were the main source of Ottoman soldiers serving in Hungary. In , per cent of the müstahfiz soldiers serving in İstolni Belgrade came from the Balkans, and less than per cent was recruited from Hungary. In , more than per cent of the newly recruited garrison soldiers of Budin srcinated from the Balkans. The majority ( per cent) of these recruits were Muslims, converts38and Christians well represented – per cent and per but centnew respectively. These data are were also inalso accordance w ith archaeological finds and with the architectural characteristics of Ottoman buildings in Hungary, which all point to heavy Balkan influences. While Ottoman Turkish was the official language of administration and record keeping, in their communications with the Hungarian and Habsburg authorities local Ottoman officials often used Hungarian. This was a convenient solution, for it was easier to find Hungarians with knowledge of Ottoman Turkish than Turkish interpreters in Vienna or Ottoman scribes with German and/or Latin language skills. The Hungarian scribes and interpreters of the beylerbeyis of Budin thus played a crucial role in cross-border diplomacy. Thanks to their work, we now possess hundreds of Hungarian-language letters of the pashas of Budin, which give us unique glimpses into the lives of the pashas and their interactions with their Hungarian and Viennese counterparts. From such sources and the relevant literature it is apparent that many of the Ottoman governors coveted appointments on the Hungarian frontier. Kadızade Ali Paşa was governor of Budin several times between and , with brief interruptions. He was instrumental in concluding the Zsitvatorok peace treaty in , which ended the war of – and produced a relatively tranquil period until the – war. Ali Paşa must have enjoyed his office, for when he was reassigned to the eastern frontier to fight against the Safavids he made a plea, through his deputy Ahmed kethüda, to King Matthias II (–) to intervene on his behalf in Istanbul and request his reappointment at Budin. He also contacted the dragoman and envoy Andrea Negroni, with whom he and his father, Habil Efendi, then mufti of Budin, had worked closely during the negotiations that led to the peace treaty of Zsitvatorok. Ali Paşa’s deputy reminded Negroni of his promise that the latter would intercede with the king on his patron’s behalf so that Ali Paşa would be reappointed to Budin. He emphasized his patron’s role in concluding the peace between the two empires. Since recent raids and skirmishes threatened the peace, he argued that it was important that Ali Paşa return to Budin. These lobbying efforts were successful, and Ali Paşa was reinstatedand as governor of counterparts, Budin in October/Novembert . Quickoftotheinform his Viennese Hungarian Johann von Molart, president Viennese War Council (–), and Ferenc II Batthyány, captain-general of the Transdanubian District, about his return to Budin, Ali Pasha promised: ‘I will do my best to uphold the provisions of our covenant so that sacred peace will be maintained fully and without any flow’.39 His remaining two years until his death in were devoted to preserving the peace. In one of his letters to Molart, Ali Paşa informed his Viennese colleague that, upon his recommendation, the Sublime Porte had dismissed the pasha of Kanije from his post ‘for disturbing the peace’. However, the fact that the
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new governor of Kanije, Ahmed Paşa, was none other than Ali Paşa’s aforementioned deputy suggests that he might have had other motives in arranging the sacking of the former beylerbeyi of Kanije beyond the noble goal of ‘striving for increased friendship and amity between us’.40 As the above examples taken from the career of Ali Paşa illustrate, social capital and networks, both in the Ottoman and Ottoman–Hungarian–Transylvanian–Habsburg contexts, were instrumental in attaining offices and thus accumulating wealth along the frontier. In the Ottoman–Transylvanian context one could mention the careers of several members of the Sokollu family, who spent most of their lives in Ottoman Bosnia and Hungary. Sokollu Mustafa Paşa had friendly relations with the Transylvanian princes from his time in Temeşvar. Indeed, János Zsigmond and Kristóf Báthori donated four villages to him, which Mustafa Paşa then converted into private property (mülk) and later made part of his endowments in support of his medrese in Peşte. Two other Sokollus, Sarhoşoğlu İbrahim and his son Hasan Paşa (known also as Yakovali or Memibegović), also had cordial relations with the Transylvanian princes. Ibrahim, whose mother was grand vezir Sokollu Mehmed Paşa’s sister, headed both the Kanije and the Eğri provinces in the early seventeenth century and belonged to the Ottoman faction which supported prince Gábor Bethlen (–) against Vienna. His politics temporarily cost Ibrahim Paşa his position, for Kadızade Ali Paşa of Budin, who headed the anti-Bethlen Ottoman faction in Hungary, had him dismissed from Eğri. Having later returned to Eğri, in Ibrahim Paşa led the Ottoman troops in support of Bethlen against the Habsburgs. His son Hasan was appointed in to the governorship of Kanije, at least partly as a result of the lobbying of the Transylvanian princes and their envoys in Constantinople.41 Members of the local Ottoman administration and garrisons were also engaged in trade and moneylending. Through these activities, they were capable of accumulating substantial wealth in money and merchandise, the value of which often exceeded their annual salaries or revenues from prebends. Sources relating to the liquidation of a Ragusan trading campany, established in by Scipione Bona and Marino Bucchia and active in Ottoman Budin until its bankruptcy in , shed light on such activities. From one document we learn that Ottoman officials and garrison soldiers possessed substantial sums from which they made loans to Bucchia, the Ragusan merchant who managed the campany’s businesses in Budin. Among Bucchia’s creditors we find the mufti of Budin, Janissaries, sipahis, çavuşes and a voyvoda (see table .). Financial and administrative services also offered lucrative opportunities for talented and ambitious soldiers. The career of Osman Ağa is a case in point. In Osman, then ağa of the beşli cavalry forces of Filek, gained the right to collect the taxes from three neighbouring villages as tax farmer. Later he managed the sultanic has estates of (mukataa Filek. In ) of Vaç, he and onehisofbusiness the mostpartner lucrative obtained revenuethesources right toinmanage Ottoman theHungary. revenues Osman agreed to collect ,, akçe during his three-year term, which was almost million akçe more than his predecessors promised (but failed to deliver). Although he temporarily lost his position to a five-member consortium in the s, he later resurfaced as tax farmer (mültezim) of the same mukataa. In return for his services, his former salary was converted into a zeamet prebend, yielding almost , akçe annually. By , he had become the nazir or fiscal inspector of the Vaç mukataa, with the tax farmers under his supervision offering to collect ,, akçe in three
— Defending and administering the Hungarian frontier — Table .
Ottoman creditors of the Ragusan merchant Bucchia and sums he owed to them at his death
Creditors Mufti of Budin Ali, Janissary bölükbaşı Kurd Çelebi, tezkereci Şaban, Janissary Piri, sipahi Mehmed sipahi
Bucchia’s debt in taller ,
Bucchia’s debt in akçe , , , , , ,
Mehmed Abdi çavuşVoyvoda Abdurrahman çavuş Hasan çavuş, guardian of Andela’s son Hasan çavuş and Ali of Foca Ali Bali, veznedar
,. .
, , , , , ,
Source: Molnár : –, –.
years. In other words, Osman managed to raise the revenues by almost million akçe since . In , the Porte rewarded his financial and military services by appointing him sancakbeyi of Seçen, although he only managed to get his has estates, which yielded more than , akçe annually, three years later. In he was appointed to head the sancak of Hatvan and in that of the militarily more prestigious Solnok, where his has revenues rose to , akçe.42 This former cavalry soldier had become one of the most powerful men in Ottoman Hungary. NOTES
Bárdossy ; Perjés ; Fodor a; Obomi . Berindei and Veinstein : ; Fodor a: . Pálffy ; Ágoston , a. Pálffy . Káldy-Nagy : –; Kunt : –; Dávid : ; Fodor : . Ágoston . Pitcher [] ; Kunt . Hegyi : –; Ágoston b. Dávid d. Dávid b: , ; c: –. Káldy-Nagy ; Blaškovič . Dávid e. Káldy-Nagy ; Dávid . Ágoston a. Kenyeres , ; Pálffy : –. BOA, MD , nos. , , , , ; Özbaran . Dávid f: –. Hegyi and , the most comprehensive discussion of the military organization of an Ottoman frontier; in English, see Hegyi . Stein deals only with Kanije and Uyvar, and is of limited value (see my review in JESHO, (): –). Hegyi : I, –.
— Gábor Ágoston — Comparable numbers were . forts per km on Spanish borders in the Netherlands, and eight on French and other Holy Roman Empire borders (Cigány : –). Czigány ; : –. Czigány : –. Hegyi : III, , , . Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Mxt. . The detailed data for Budin have been published in Ágoston ; summary data in Hegyi : I, –. Ágoston . BOA, MAD , p. . On the different types of guns, see Ágoston : –. BOA, MAD , p. .
Istanbul,: Ágoston Topkapı –, Sarayı –. Arşivi E , published in Hungarian translation in Fodor . Quoted in Tóth : . Szakály . Szakály : , and generally –. Fekete [] : , ; see also Hegyi : . Several such cases are documented by the correspondence between these towns and the local Ottoman authorities. See, for instance, the ‘Turkish letters’ of Jászberény (Hegyi : –, –, –, , , , –). Ágoston . Kubinyi ; Dávid g. Ágoston . Hegyi : I, –. Bayerle , x. Ibid.: x, –, –. Sudár . Fodor .
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE O TTOMAN FRONT IER IN KURDISTAN IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES*
Nelida Fuccaro
T
he development of the Ottoman state as an imperial power was closely connected to the control of its border regions. Eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq, areas with large Kurdish populations, became part of the eastern frontier of the empire, guarding its borders with Safavid Iran, in the early sixteenth century. The distinctive feature of the ‘culture of the border’ of Ottoman Kurdistan was the military nature of the political and administrative organization of the region as a ‘buffer zone’ which protected the Ottoman–Safavid frontier. The Kurdish tribal leaders and aristocrats who controlled the local principalities, tribal areas and towns constituted the main instruments of Ottoman rule. Not only were many of them integrated into the Ottoman administrative system as frontier lords, they also provided contingents for Ottoman military campaigns. While Ottoman records provide evidence of the military and administrative aspects of Kurdistan as a border region, the literary accounts by the famous Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi, the Kurdish prince Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi and the mystic Ahmad Khani are evidence of different experiences and representations of the border. In particular, the narratives of these actors provide an insight into how crucial issues of race and religious practice permeated border identities, besides offering an indication of the self-representation of both Ottoman and Kurdish elites. CHARACTERIZING THE FRONT OTTOMAN KURDISTAN
IER OF
The Kurdish regions of eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq became part of the Ottoman borderlands during afterimperial the campaigns of Selim the Safavids and . Likeand other peripheries createdI against by Ottoman militarybetween expansion in the Balkans, the Arab world and North Africa, these regions were not demarcated by physical or clearly defined boundaries of military and political influence. The Ottoman–Safavid frontier was not a political barrier between states and people. As with many pre-modern borders, it shared a number of features with McNeill’s Eurasian frontier. It was a fluid zone of passage, warfare and imperial administration, an area of economic and cultural exchange with a harsh natural environment. It was
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not a frontier of ‘separation’ but one of ‘contact’. 1 The Kurds inhabited a mountain region (Kurdistan, the land of the Kurds) which lay at the intersection of the Turkish/Türkmen, Arab and Persian worlds. Historically, and in many ways linguistically, this ethnically and religiously mixed area belonged to Greater Iran: it extended from south-eastern Anatolia to Armenia and Azerbaijan in the north-west, and stretched southwards along the Zagros Mountains following approximately the present border between Iran and Iraq. The strategic importance of Kurdistan was largely the result of its location along the historic trade routes which connected Central Asia, Iran and the Persian Gulf to Anatolia and the Mediterranean. The frontier which emerged of the Ottoman–Safavid confrontation both military and ideological. A seriesout of imperial wars, from the battle of Çaldıranwas in to the treaty of Zuhab in , established a rough boundary line which lasted with minor modifications until the collapse of the Ottoman empire in . 2 Ottoman military expansion upheld Sunni Islam, the religion of the majority of Kurds, as a bulwark against Shi‘ism, the state religion of Iran under the Safavids. In spite of the successful Ottoman advance, sixteenth-century Ottoman Kurdistan continued to be home to the fanatical Kızılbaş, the enthusiastic Türkmen supporters of the early Safavid state. Although by the mid-seventeenth century these Shi‘i ‘heretics’ no longer posed a military or ideological threat to Ottoman rule, Kurdistan remained a fragmented frontier polity. This was the cumulative result of several factors: the tribal geography of the region, sporadic imperial wars with Iran after and, last but not least, the flexible administrative and political arrangements established by the Ottomans. The frontier as a zone of military and religious expansion is a theme which has featured prominently in the historiography of the Ottoman empire. Famously, it was pioneered by the Austrian Orientalist Paul Wittek in his work on the early Ottoman state in western Anatolia and the Balkans. For Wittek, the Ottoman frontier emerged out of the confrontation with Christendom, moulded by the sacred enterprise of gaza, or holy war. Since he formulated what became known as the gazi theory in the s, the endurance of this frontier Weltanschauung as a central tenet of imperial ideology has been one of the arguments used to explain the enduring power of the Ottoman military classes.3 The frontier established by the Ottomans in Kurdistan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries differed substantially from that of western Anatolia and Rumeli before the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in . Both were military frontiers. Yet Kurdistan was conquered by imperial armies and administered as part of a world empire, while western Anatolia formed the nucleus of the early Ottoman state, which expanded with the incorporation of neighbouring Türkmen emirates. Undoubtedly, these early Ottoman borderlands played a crucial role in processes of empire-building, in contrast to their characterization by Wittek as zones of ‘cultural (uc beyis) who barbarism’. In fact, laid the it is foundation now widelyofrecognized Ottoman that imperial it wasrule theinTurkish Anatolia frontier and inlords the Balkans after .4 The evolution of Ottoman authority in Kurdistan tells a different story of centre–periphery relations, as it was guided largely by the need to defend the region as a buffer zone against Iran. Until , when the Ottomans regained permanent control of Baghdad and of southern Iraq, the administrative organization of eastern Anatolia and of the province of Mosul reflected their position as centres of Ottoman military mobilization against the Safavids. As the seventeenth century progressed, the
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diversity of administrative arrangements in the Ottoman provinces of Diyarbekir, Van and Mosul shows the extent to which the imperial government had become entangled in a complex web of alliances and confrontations with Kurdish tribal and religious notables. As in Hungary and Georgia, the Ottomans established a sort of condominium which reflected a situation of ‘shared possession and compromise’.5 This was particularly true for areas located close to the Ottoman–Safavid frontline, far removed from the scrutiny of Istanbul. Here, devolution of administrative and fiscal powers to local chieftains guaranteed Ottoman stability, as suggested by the history of several autonomous Kurdish principalities which became Ottoman vassal states (hükumets).6 That these principalities remained the century most important institutions in the success Ottoman borderlands until the early nineteenth is testimony to the overall of these arrangements. As Ottoman Kurdistan acted essentially as the strategic defence of the empire, it was not a frontier of colonization, settlement and acculturation in the sense suggested by Jackson Turner for North America.7 The Ottomans construed rural Kurdistan as a ‘no-man’s-land’, a zone of ‘cultural barbarism’, similar to Wittek’s characterization of early Ottoman western Anatolia. The stern and harsh landscape undoubtedly played a role in this conceptualization. The mid-seventeenth century traveller Evliya Çelebi, partly voicing the bias of a sophisticated Istanbuli, described the area as ‘Kurdistan, Türkmenistan ve sengistan’ – that is, ‘a land of Kurds, Türkmens and rocks’.8 Writing in , the Ottoman official ‘Aziz Efendi also pointed to the strategic importance of Kurdistan in his Nasihatname, a treatise advising the sultan on issues of imperial policy.9 To the Safavids, Kurdistan remained an alien land. When Persian historians included it in ‘Eraq-e Arab (Mesopotamia), they depicted a distant and treacherous borderland with an evil-natured and deceitful Kurdish population.10 A salient feature of the Ottoman presence in Kurdistan was that there was no direct link between faith and imperial expansion. Kurdistan was not part of the sacred geography of the Ottoman empire in the same way as southern Iraq was for the Safavids. Despite the region’s identification with the Shi‘i threat, Ottoman Kurdistan was not a frontier populated by gazis, although the great majority of its Kurdish population were Sunni Muslims. Sectarian animosity contributed to continuing tensions with the Safavids, thus easing the process of integration of eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq into the Ottoman domains after . For instance, the short-lived Persian occupation of Diyarbekir after was marred by confrontation between Kurdish troops loyal to the town’s former Türkmen ruler and Shi‘i contingents of the new Safavid governor, who was the brother-in-law of Shah Isma‘il.11 Religious and sectarian affinities undoubtedly contributed to integrate the Kurds into the wider Islamic borderland of the empire, where, as suggested by Kemal Karpat, 12 In stressing ‘[t]herole’. community of religion seems to have credentials played a special tive” the [with Sunnithe andcentre] particularly Shafi‘i of the“integraKurds, the Kurdish prince Sharaf al-Din al-Bitlisi, in his Sharafnama, a dynastic history of the Kurds written at the end of the sixteenth century, emphasized their loyalty to the Ottoman state. As the head of the prominent border principality of Bitlis, he illustrates the extent to which being an Ottoman subject was closely identified with Sunni Islam, at least among the Kurdish aristocracy.13 Yet Kurdistan, like Anatolia, also nurtured religious dissidence, which was embedded in its strong Sufi popular culture and often coloured by heterodox beliefs and practices. Unsurprisingly, religious and political
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dissent could go hand in hand, particularly in rural and tribal Kurdistan, demarcating in the eyes of many Ottoman officials the borders of bilad al-kufr, the limes between imperial civilisation and barbarity. The gazi imperial tradition resurfaced in the rhetoric which underscored the imposition of Ottoman authority in such turbulent regions. Evliya Çelebi, for instance, uses the metaphor of plunder in order to portray the reassertion of direct Ottoman rule on Bitlis in . His hyperbolic description of the auction of the possessions of the Kurdish prince organized by Melek Ahmed Paşa, the Ottoman governor of Van, reads as an act of pillage staged in the sophisticated milieu of the court of Bitlis. Evliya ironically notedout that Melek Ahmed the to [governorship of the] province of Van turned to ‘[f]or be a veritable Egypt’,Pasha alluding the pasha’s considerable per14 sonal gain. Similarly, Evliya describes the Ottoman occupation of Jabal Sinjar in the province of Mosul, the tribal stronghold of the much hated Yezidi sect, as an act of gaza. Although Evliya’s use of hyperbole is typical, his descriptions convey the strong military ethos which characterized the Ottoman presence in the region.15 THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE OTTOMAN BORDERS: HÜKUMET , TRIBE AND TOWN
Control of the three closely related units of local principalities, tribes and towns represented the baseline of the system of ‘condominium’ established by the Ottomans in Kurdistan. All Kurdish principalities were based in towns, although not all the main centres of Kurdistan were the seat of a principality. Most notably, the Ottoman empire administered threefor large Van Mosul.relationTribes were a crucial directly military the resource thecentres empire of andDiyarbekir, had a varied andand complex ship with the principalities. Yet, although Kurdish princes claimed tribal descent and often had large tribal entourages, their principalities were complex socio-political formations which included large numbers of peasants and urban dwellers. After , the creation of the Kurdish autonomous governorates (Kurt hükumetleri) as Ottoman administrative units reflected the recognition by the imperial government of its limited capability to exert direct rule, and confirmed the political position which an established Kurdish military aristocracy had enjoyed for centuries. Many of the hükumets had existed as independent or semi-independent principalities before the Ottomans entered the region. The dynasties which controlled the towns of Hakkari and Hasankeyf had been in power at least since the thirteenth century, and the rulers of Bitlis had probably been independent overlords since the twelfth century.16 The Kurdish principalities had played a crucial political role during fifteenth-century Karakoyunlu and Akkoyunlu rule, a period when the boundaries between Sunnism and Shi‘ism werezones particularly blurred, thus anticipating the importance they were to 17 assume as buffer in the Ottoman–Safavid confrontation. The myriad of principalities which dotted the mountains of Kurdistan in the early Ottoman period varied in extension, social and political complexity, and administrative status. The term hükumet in the province of Van generally denoted large size and exemption from Ottoman taxation, the latter being an indication of the highest degree of autonomy from Istanbul. Ottoman tax registers ( tahrir) were not generally drawn up for these regions. Yet Bitlis, the largest hükumet of the province, was an
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exception, as a mixed fiscal arrangement had existed since its incorporation into the Ottoman empire in .18 In the seventeenth century the poll tax (cizye) levied on the Armenians and on the Arabic-speaking Christian population of the town supported the janissary troops of Van, suggesting that this type of revenue was incorporated into the imperial domains. In contrast, the cizye imposed on the Christian peasants of the fertile Muş plain was pocketed by Bitlis’s Kurdish governor (hakim) as part of his conspicuous portfolio of fiscal rights, which also included collections on transit trade.19 Bitlis was not the exception which confirmed the rule. Throughout the region flexible administrative arrangements suited an expanding military frontier. In fact, the Kurt hükumetleri ocaklık, aWhat a type offiefdoms. unit of specialtostatus of estates granted to families aswere hereditary seemed have consisting generally distinguished the
hükumets from most yurtluk and ocaklık sancaks (i.e., the ‘ordinary’ hereditary fiefdoms which dotted Ottoman Kurdistan) was that the hükumets were not placed under the timar system.20 Yet the practical arrangements were as fluid as the administrative terminology which described them. While some hükumets such as Bitlis included timar and has fiefdoms, the term hükumet in the sixteenth century was interchangeable with eyalet (province), as convincingly argued by Martin van Bruinessen for Diyarbekir. As suggested by Metin Kunt, the term eyalet itself, as opposed to vilayet, denoted more
regional autonomy throughout the empire.21 Mostly of tribal extraction, Kurdish hakims and their families maintained their positions in various ways under the umbrella of Ottoman rule. Ideologically, the households controlling the largest and most powerful principalities buttressed their legitimacy by claiming prestigious ancestry and maintaining a genealogical tradition. It is no coincidence that it was one of these princes, Sharaf al-Din of Bitlis, who wrote the first dynastic history of the Kurds in , at the end of a century of dramatic political change. His Sharafnama mirrors the self-image of the Kurdish aristocracy and the renewed importance assumed by pedigree and dynastic tradition in the era of Ottoman–Safavid confrontation. The genealogical attributions of Sharaf al-Din’s Kurdish epic are various. They range from the Ayyubids (for the rulers of Hasankeyf) to the Abbasids (for the princes of Hakkari and ‘Amadiyyah) and the Umayyads (for the rulers of Cezire and Sulaymaniyyah).22 For his own dynasty, Sharaf al-Din emphasized its relations with the pre-Islamic rulers of Iran, clearly influenced by his family’s involvement with the Safavid courts of Isfahan and Qazvin, where his father, Shams al-Din, resided after , following his expulsion from Bitlis by the Ottomans. Like that of his father, the life of the author of the Sharafnama was profoundly influenced by the Ottoman–Safavid border. He was born in Iran and educated at the Safavid court, where he remained until he regained possession of Bitlis in as an Ottoman vassal at the beginning of yet another war with the Safavids.23 Alongside genealogy, military enabledofthe Kurdish maintain their power. This authority reliedauthority on the control tribal armiesdynasties and was to epitomized by the submission of sedentary and peasant populations, a mixture of Arab Christians, Türkmen and Armenians. Evliya Çelebi provides a vivid illustration of the military ethos which permeated seventeenth-century Bitlis. He was fascinated by its Kurdish aristocracy of tribal extraction (called rojīkī) to which the ruling family belonged. Not only did this aristocracy form a powerful military caste but it also included urbane ‘men of learning and culture, with henna on their hands and beards and antimony on their eyes’.24 Prowess and military strength were also qualities celebrated in courtly
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culture and public ceremonial. The games of polo staged weekly by teams of rojīkī horsemen in the centre of Bitlis were popular events which dramatized combat and celebrated the military capabilities of its elites. Evliya noted that ‘[the game of polo] is an excellent military exercise, although it turns into a real battle over the ball, and blood is shed’.25 For the Ottomans the administration of a sensitive frontier region such as Kurdistan was closely intertwined with its military organization. As in other border areas of the empire, the distribution of rural and urban tax farms in exchange for the provision of soldiers and military supplies articulated the political economy of imperial 26
government. holders of hükumet s and of ocaklık s subjectThe to the were obliged toThe provide fighters under different arrangements. onlytimar duty system of the Kurdish hakims was military obedience at times of war. As stipulated by the official document (ahdname) which sanctioned their investiture as Ottoman vassals, they were bound to mobilize their troops during major military campaigns under the command of Ottoman governors. In contrast, the holders of ocakliks under timar arrangements had to provide troops for the army on a regular basis and held their tax income as sipahis. Following the introduction of the provincial military levies ( sarıcas and segbans) during the reign of Ahmed I (–), many were recruited from Kurdish tribal areas controlled by ocaklık beys.27 In the case of the Kurdish hakims, the provision of armed forces, assistance and intelligence could be handsomely rewarded. In , after the successful Revan campaign against the Safavids, Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi was given several districts in Van province which had previously been under Safavid control. He was also rewarded with a robe of honour ( hil‘at) and a jewelled sword in recognition for his loyalty. Kurdish princes did not merely provide auxiliary forces; their armies often occupied the frontline of the Ottoman military advance. When the mobilization against the Safavids shifted to the south-east in the seventeenth century, the princes of ‘Amadiyyah and Şehrizor, two of the most powerful Kurdish emirates around Mosul, led their contingents in front of the imperial troops stationed in Diyarbekir.28 While the presence of the Ottoman–Safavid military frontline could be advantageous to the Kurdish aristocracy, in some cases Ottoman intervention accentuated the chronic dynastic and tribal factionalism characteristic of the principalities. The rulers of Hasankeyf lost their hereditary position at the end of the sixteenth century because of rivalry between the four sons of Melik Khalil, the prince whohad governed the principality following the battle of Çaldıran. While the town became part of the province of Diyarbekir, Khalil’s three surviving sons were granted Ottoman administrative positions elsewhere. With a strong but divided tribal base, the rulers of the Hakkari principality in the Lake Van region had split into a pro-Ottoman and a pro-Safavid camp bythe late s. The 29 Ottoman authorities in Van subsequently appointed their family protégé as prince. Althoughsituation, the history of Efendi these two principalities was not representative overall Kurdish ‘Aziz lamented in hisNasihatname of thatofthethe rapacious attitude of Ottoman officials and their continual intervention in the internal affairs of the principalities had significantly weakened the eastern frontier of theempire.30 In the sixteenth century the eastward expansion of the Ottoman military frontier had produced more direct imperial control. In the Van region, a number of small hereditary timar fiefdoms were created along the lake shores, and, more significantly, the principality of Bitlis became a hükumet ocaklik after the establishment of a provincial administration in .31 Tax registers from Diyarbekir suggest that some
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principalities became ordinary sancaks after , while by the mid-sixteenth century the revenue of others was transferred to the Ottoman provincial treasury. Yet, ‘Aziz Efendi’s bleak assessment of the situation in seems to have anticipated developments in the following decades. In the last third of the seventeenth century, there was an evident loss of control by the central government in Diyarbekir, where only nine ordinary sancaks remained of the eighteen registered in .32 An analysis of the Kurdish principalities as Ottoman border institutions sheds light on the complexities of Kurdistan as a frontier society. In particular, it questions the validity of the reductionist approach which views the relationship between the Kurds and the Ottoman empire ‘state’. This approach stems idenfrom an understanding of ‘tribe’asasone thebetween exclusive‘tribe’ locusand of Kurdish political and social tity, one of the largely unfounded ‘givens’ of much historiography on the Kurds. 33 Early Ottoman Kurdistan was a complex political, social and administrative organization. Its hükumets were not tribal formations but political units based in towns with a majority of non-tribal populations. It is true that princely families were of tribal lineage and that, particularly in the case of Bitlis and Hakkari, tribal clients constituted their power base.34 Yet, as a result of the feudal organization of Kurdish society (which was accentuated by the Ottoman administrative structure) the Kurdish hakims were not primus inter pares. Although their position was often challenged by rivals, they had sources of authority that were independent of the tribes. To put it simply, alongside imperial support they collected revenue from land and from trade.35 Nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes remained peripheral to the political history of the principalities of the Diyarbekir province in this period. These tribes were neither integrated into any of the hükumets nor organized in administrative units with a territorial base. Their classification as sancaks seems to have been purely fiscal, as government agents (emins) collected taxes before they moved to their summer pastures. Moreover, by the s the tribal population of the province had decreased. While the largest confederations such as the Boz Ulus (which included Kurds and Türkmen) broke up, the Ottomans tended to distribute military fiefs to the leaders of small tribes in order to boost army recruitment.36 In Van province, which had a larger tribal population than Diyarbekir, the distribution of fiefs and of grazing grounds seems to have had an impact on the political stability of its principalities. In particular, the disruption of the patterns of transhumance of nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes played an important role in triggering conflict inside the large hükumets of Hakkari and Bitlis.37 While tribes are of relative importance for understanding the relationship between the empire and its Kurdish subjects, towns constituted the microcosm of the frontier polities of Ottoman Kurdistan. The walled towns and fortresses which dotted the region’s landscape represented the physical aspect of the Ottoman–Safavid frontier. Thethese Ottomans’ to although defend and expand frontierthat depended on their control of fortifiedability centres, there is nothis evidence they built new forts in the region, unlike along the Ottoman–Habsburg frontier in Hungary. 38 The ancient walled towns of Diyarbekir and Van, whose fortifications were described at some length by Evliya Çelebi, were the seats of Ottoman governors.39 Around Lake Van the military frontline with the Safavids was defended by a series of small castles garrisoned by janissary troops. The rise of Mosul as a major Ottoman administrative centre, during the campaigns of Murad IV (–) against the Safavids, coincided with the incorporation of Irbil and Şehrizor, two fortified settlements located in Mosul’s
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Kurdish hinterland. In the previous century the fortress of Şehrizor had been central to Ottoman mobilization against Iran with Baghdad, which was recaptured permanently from the Safavids in .40 One of the very few descriptions of Ottoman Kurdistan as an urban frontier is given by Evliya Çelebi. In contrast with his portrayal of rural Kurdistan as a ‘land of rocks’, Evliya’s representation of urban life is sympathetic – that of an Istanbuli well attuned to urban cultures. In a period whencelali bandits and rebels dominated the Anatolian countryside, Bitlis and Diyarbekir are presented very much as other Anatolian towns: havens of culture and civilization in contrast to their surroundings. In spite of being Kurdistan, in Bitlis ‘there are many notables and retainers the Khan who wear sable furs’, a sign 41 Bitlis is of wealth and civilization. a lush gardenofcity, with rivers, fountains and public baths accessible to both rich and poor. Evliya gives a famously hyperbolic depiction of the magnificent pleasure gardens of the town’s Kurdish ruler, who is himself portrayed 42 as generous, cultured and multi-talented, an Ottoman ‘renaissance’ prince. Public spaces – the citadel, the palace of the ruler and the central square ( meydan), which was surrounded by barracks and by the harem palace – also characterized Bitlis as an Ottoman town.43 Some elements of its architecture, however, suggest a degree of negative comparison with proper ‘Ottoman’ towns: the absence of medreses with large and imposing domes and the relatively simple structures of the public fountains. 44 In contrast, Diyarbekir’s imposing city walls and its extraordinary architectural heritage and riches captured Evliya’s fervid imagination. The inroads of Ottoman civilization and imperial culture are evident from the prominence accorded by Evliya to the patronage of mosques and hamams on the part of Ottoman governors.45 THE KURDS IN THE OTTOMAN FRONTIER: RACE, LAND AND RELIGION
The border status of Kurdistan, its autonomous principalities and the peculiarities of Kurdish religious culture and popular tradition were the key elements which contributed to an awareness of separation between the empire and its Kurdish subjects. Race, religious practices and identification with Kurdistan as a territory constituted important markers of Kurdish political, social and cultural identity. They determined the position occupied by the Kurds in the ‘human’ frontier of Ottoman Kurdistan and defined their relationship with the imperial metropolis. Ideas of diversity and separation, however, reflected the fluid nature of this frontier society. Far from representing an obstacle to integration, they fostered the emergence of a distinctive border culture which fused elements of local and imperial tradition. In the Seyahatname, Evliya Çelebi uses ‘Kurd’ as a racial category in the same way as this termand appears in Ottoman official documents. categoryInapplies to tribesmen mystics, irrespective of their urban or Yet, ruralthis extraction. Bitlis,only Evliya mentions only a few Kurdish groups: the tribal/military caste of the rojīkī, the ascetics and the ulema, who carry daggers. The fief-holders, tax-collectors and merchants who resided in the town are not given any specific racial label, although we can assume that they included a sizeable proportion of Kurdish speakers.46 Not surprisingly, Evliya is prone to racial stereotyping. Tribal Kurds are depicted as primitive, treacherous, quarrelsome and bloodthirsty. Often, these qualities are embodied in the abundance of body hair, which for Evliya is a symbol of wildness and unrefined manliness. He
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mentions that Kurdish boys have moustaches and beards from the age of ten, suggesting a precocious masculinity and involvement in military pursuits.47 In the case of heterodox groups, hairiness is also a sign of ritual impurity. Evliya famously characterized the Yezidi Kurds as ‘hairy heretics’ and Jabal Sinjar, their stronghold in the Mosul hinterland, as saçlı dağı, ‘Mountain of the Hairy Ones’.48 It appears that the Kurds were considered a separate people inhabiting a specific land long before the arrival of the Ottomans.While the Arabs popularized the termKurd (pl. Akrad) soon after the conquest, it was probably the Seljuk sultan Sanjar (d. ) who 49 When Evliya Çelebi first used ‘Kurdistan’ as the name of an administrative unit in Iran. visited Anatolia, the Kurdistan was the name of onesociety, of theeyalet in the province of Van.eastern In accentuating feudal character of Kurdish thesapplication of the timar system and the creation of thehükumets by the Ottomans undoubtedly increased the political and economic importance of land for large segments of the population. Moreover, the authority of their ‘natural’ leaders, tribal chiefs andhakims, became more closely identified with the control of particular regions. The role of feudalism and the principalities in defining the political map of Ottoman Kurdistan has had interesting implications for the study of the relationship between territory and Kurdish political identity, the staple of modern nationalism. More or less explicitly, some literature has viewed the hükumets as pre-modern national entities and their ancient ruling dynasties as the bearers of a proto-national consciousness.In the same vein, theSharafnama has been viewed as the first pan-Kurdish history.50 This approach clearly illustrates the paramount concern with the genesis of nationalism which has permeated Kurdish studies, rather than reflecting the historical realities of early Ottoman Kurdistan. A nationalist analysis of the hükumets as Ottoman border institutions is misleading at best. Sharaf al-Din al-Bitlisi’s dynastic history of the Kurds cannot be considered as evidence of ethno-genesis. Contrary to what some of the nationalist-oriented literature has argued, the Sharafnama does not suggest that the Kurds existed as a separate ‘nation’ in the modern sense of the term. Sharaf al-Din’s epic is a representation of the vicissitudes of the pre-modern Ottoman–Safavid frontier so significant in the life of its author. As a literary text the Sharafnama is also evidence of the extent to which this frontier contributed to the integration and dissemination of imperial cultures. The work was composed in chronicle form, a popular genre at both the Ottoman and Safavid courts. Moreover, it was written in Persian, the literary language of the day, which guaranteed audiences as far as India. The same awareness of group distinctiveness generated by the encounter with different imperial cultures and peoples appears in the work of Ahmad Khani (b. ), a Kurdish poet and Sufi scholar. In his most famous poem, Mem-u Zin, he distinguished Kurds (Ekrad) from Ottomans (Rum), Persians (‘Acem) and Arabs (‘Arab). In this Persian love epic, which was written in the his Kurmançi dialect by the poet Nizami, he expressed resentment of and bothprobably Ottomaninfluenced and Safavid rule and his dissatisfaction with the political situation in Kurdistan. 51 The character of Bekir, the intriguer who tries to separate the two lovers Mem and Zin, symbolizes the discord among the Kurdish princes which Ahmad Khani witnessed in his own lifetime. This poem may have been influenced also by Kurdish folk songs which recounted the confrontation between the prince of Bitlis and the Ottoman governor of Van, Melek Ahmed Paşa, an event also described by Evliya Çelebi.52 The poem by Ahmad Khani also demonstrates the importance assumed by the
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Kurmançi dialect as a medium of literaryand political expression amongulema and mystics, the literati of early Ottoman Kurdistan. InMem-u Zin he often uses Kurmanç – that is, speakers of Kurmançi– as a synonym for Kurds, suggesting that, by the seventeenth 53 That the century, language was perceived as a marker of trans-local political identity. religious classes were the recipients of the Kurdish literate tradition is also confirmed by Evliya Çelebi. During his visit to the principality of ‘Amadiyyah he transcribed a sample of Kurdish poetry written by a local scholar, while praising the town’s literary culture.54 Scholars with mystical proclivities such as Ahmad Khani were paramount figures in seventeenth-century Kurdistan. Not surprisingly in a border region, religious life was dominated Sufi doctrine orders. Like Sharaf al-Din Bitlisimezheb. a century Evliya Çelebi mentionsbythethe Shafi‘i as the ‘official’ Kurdish Yet,earlier, the religious geography of the Seyahatname is populated by tekkes, pilgrimage sites, dervish lodges, and shrines of saintly gnostics and mystics, reflecting Evliya’s personal involvement and fascination with Sufi practice and culture.55 In Diyarbekir he describes the land of the Kurds as the realm of Sufi gnosis: But as this [Diyarbekir] is Kurdistan, there are not so many people who know the Qur’an by heart, as it is the case in Arabia. [This is so] because they do not devote much effort to the science of memorizing the Qur’an, with the argumentthat ‘a person who concentrates on memorization cannot perfect himself inunderstanding’.56 Often Evliya presents his readers with the image of the Kurd as mystic cum miracle worker. Under the heading ‘the science of magic’, he provides an enthusiastic account of the performances of Kurdish dervishes at the Bitlis court during the celebrations in honour of Melek Ahmed Paşa, newly appointed Ottoman governor of Van. 57 The flamboyant literary quality of the association between Kurds and magic, the latter a subject which Evliya often used to entertain his audiences, becomes apparent in the following description of one of the wonders performed by a Molla Mehmed: [He] approached his sack and took on a multi-colored embroidered waistband, which he concealed beneath his waistcloth. After sitting upon it a moment, he removed the band from beneath the cloth, uttered a charm, and put it back in the sack. Suddenly the sack started to convulse and emit thunder and lightning. From its mouth emerged the head of a huge serpent which slithered out and lay coiled up on the hot sand, facing the sun. But as it heaved, its body kept swelling, its eyes flamed like a torch, its teeth jutted like elephant tusks, and it became covered with hair like a deer.58 Thetheworld of esoteric beliefs sofrontier powerfully evoked by dominated this description is reminiscent of popular and dervish-led culture which the Turkish principalities of western Anatolia in the age of Wittek’s gazis. In the religious periphery of Kurdistan, this culture intermingled with heterodox and ‘heretical’ traditions which gave the region its distinctive brand of political dissidence in Ottoman eyes. The history of Yezidism, a syncretic creed which developed in the hinterland of Mosul, is a case in point. Its religious and political srcins suggest a strong Sufi connection. Muslim and Christian local traditions portray it as the offspring of a Sufi brotherhood established in the thirteenth century by ‘Adi ibn Musafir, a mystic whose srcin is
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unclear. In the following centuries Yezidisim retained important Sufi elements, particularly in the sect’s Mosul strongholds.59 According to the Sharafnama, many Kurdish princes before the Ottoman occupation were either Yezidis or enjoyed the support of Yezidi tribes, suggesting that this heterodox creed had a wide following throughout Kurdistan. Although Yezidism was in retreat by the mid-sixteenth century, the militantly clannish tradition of the population of Jabal Sinjar and their resistance to the imposition of Ottoman authority became the archetype of the murky world of Kurdish heterodoxy with its corollaries of treachery, treason and hateful religious practices. After having personally witnessed the military expedition mounted by Melek Ahmed in –, Evliya Çelebi described them as: Paşa against the Yezidis of Jabal Sinjar a band of rebels and brigands and perverts . . . They all worship black dogs. In their villages you never find a mosque. They know nothing of fasting and prayer, pilgrimage and alms, and the witness formula. All of them are wine bibers, since they raise juicy grapes in their vineyards.60 The Yezidis represented an extreme example of the ‘deviant’ nature of Kurdish religious culture. In fact, the majority of both urban and rural Kurds followed the relatively orthodox religious traditions championed by the Nakşbendi and Kadiri Sufi orders, some of which are also mentioned in theSeyahatname.61 As in other ‘peripheries’ of the pre-modern Muslim world, these religious organizations were flexible border institutions. Depending on circumstances, they could function both as vehicles of imperial integration and as loci of political dissent. It is reasonable to assume that, in the sixteenth-century Ottoman–Safavid confrontation, the Kurdish orders assumed the role of defenders of Sunni orthodoxy against the heretic Kızılbaş. Evidence on the activities of some of their seventeenth-century leaders suggests transborder activism and presents a contrasting picture of collaboration and dissidence. For instance, Şeyh Mahmud of Diyarbekir, the most famous Nakşbendi of eastern Anatolia in Evliya Çelebi’s time, was srcinally from Urumiyyah in north-western Iran. He left the town when it was occupied by the Safavids in – in fear of the Kızılbaş and relocated to Diyarbekir, where he attracted a very large following. His reputation among the urban population was matched by the high esteem accorded him by local Ottoman officials. Şeyh Mahmud was instrumental in enlisting support for Murad IV among local notables during his military campaigns to Revan in and to Baghdad in –.Yet he was executed by the sultan on his way back from Baghdad on suspicion of planning a popular insurrection against the Ottoman government. The allegedly millenarian nature of Şeyh Mahmud’s plot against the empire suggests thatand religious awareness might havetoincreased as a result of the Iranian wars. Further, more significantly, it points his grassroots influence as the protector of the rights of urban and peasant populations who had suffered extensively as a result of Murad IV’s campaigns.62 It was precisely this kind of influence which made Sufi leaders ‘natural’ allies of the imperial administration, although it could equally well transform them into potential threats. Twenty-five years after the death of Şeyh Mahmud, a Şeyh Muhammad ibn Sa‘id ‘Abdallah from ‘Amadiyyah was arrested by the governor of Mosul after having led a mahdist insurrection.
— The Ottoman frontier in Kurdistan — CONCLUSION
The frontier society of Ottoman Kurdistan was shaped by the experience of imperial power and by Ottoman–Safavid rivalry, both of which functioned as influential ‘connectors’ with the metropolis. Kurdish princes and frontier lords were enmeshed in an Ottoman power politics shaped by the confrontation with Safavid Iran. In spite of their political leverage as transborder actors, they depended on imperial favour to maintain their political and social positions. In religious terms, and in spite of the deviant practices of dervishes and groups such as the Yezidis, the Kurdish periphery was linked to the imperial administration by a network ofkadis and muftis. Even in the autonomous hükumets, they exercised legal authority as appointees of the central government. It was largely in the towns that Ottoman political, cultural and religious influence was more acutely felt, while the tribal areas continued to be part of an unstable frontier region. The different representations of the Kurds by Evliya Çelebi, Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi and Ahmad Khani show awareness of and sensitivity to their racial, political and religious specificity. Their narratives of the Ottoman–Safavid border, however, suggest that these specificities did not constitute a source of insurmountable antagonism and that divisions were part and parcel of the world of the Ottoman borderland. NOTES
* I am grateful to Frederick Anscombe, Ben Fortna, Peter Sluglett and Evrim Binbaş for comments and bibliographical suggestions, and to Mark Keese and Zeynep Or for their hospitality and interest in Ottoman history. The image of Bitlis included in this article is reproduced with the permission of the Historic Cities Research Project, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, courtesy of Mr Özgür Tüfekçi (Historic Cities Research Project:http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il). McNeill ; Power : . For a general discussion of pre-modern frontiers in the Eurasian context, see Power : –; Standen : –. On Ottoman border regions, see Karpat ; Ágoston ; Stein : –; Heywood , . O’Shea : –, –. Wittek ; Heywood : –. Heywood : –. Ágoston : . Van Bruinessen a: –. Stein : –. Van Bruinessen –: . Reid’s discussion of the Nasihatname and of other contemporary Ottoman sources (– : –) is informative but polemic. Matthee : –, . Van Bruinessen a: –. Karpat : .
Bitlîsî Evliya: Çelebi. : –, . Dankoff : –. Bitlîsî : xviii–xix. Van Bruinessen a: –. Sinclair : –; Ágoston : –. Evliya Çelebi : , –. Öz : –. Sinclair : –; Van Bruinessen a: –, esp. table , p. ; Öz : , – n. .
— Nelida Fuccaro —
Bidlîsi : I/, , ; II/, . Ibid.: II/, . Evliya Çelebi : ; on the rojīkī, see –, –, –. Van Bruinessen’s statement (a: ) that the rojīkī were not a military caste contrasts with Evliya Çelebi’s description. Evliya Çelebi : –. See for instance the case of Mosul province and the rise to political prominence of the Christian Jalili family as military contractors in the eighteenth century (Khoury : –). The relationship between land tenure, administration and military organization throughout Kurdistan is discussed in Van Bruinessen a: –.
Dankoff Sinclair : :–, . ; Van Bruinessen –: . Van Bruinessen a: ; Sinclair : –. Van Bruinessen a: . Sinclair : . Van Bruinessen a: –; Ágoston : . As we shall see below, this understanding has had a marked political connotation. The Kurds have been very seldom studied in urban milieus. For an example, see Fuccaro . Van Bruinessen a: , –. For an extensive anthropological discussion of the nature of tribal authority in Kurdistan, see Van Bruinessen a: –. Van Bruinessen a: –. Sinclair : . Stein . Evliya Çelebi : –; Evliya Çelebi : –. Khoury : , . Dankoff : –; Evliya Çelebi : –.
Evliya–. Çelebi : –, –. Ibid.: Ibid.: . Evliya Çelebi : –, –. Evliya Çelebi : , –. Ibid.: . Dankoff : . O’Shea : ; Özoğlu : –. Izady : –. For a critique of this approach, see Vali . Özoğlu : –; Van Bruinessen : –. Hassanpour : –; Reid –: –. This term was also used in a more parochial sense and with a narrower social connotation. While denoting Kurdish peasants throughout Ottoman and Safavid Kurdistan, it also referred to segments of the Kurdish tribal elites of the Mosul region (Van Bruinessen b: ). Van Bruinessen –: ; Blau –. Evliya Çelebi : – and , on Sufi and dervish lodges; –, on the shrines of saintly gnostics and pious mystics; Van Bruinessen b: . Evliya Çelebi’s Sufi credentials
are discussed Dankoff Evliya Çelebi in : . : –. Evliya Çelebi : –, –. Ibid.: –. Fuccaro : –; Kreyenbroek . Dankoff : , . Van Bruinessen : –. Ibid.: –; Evliya Çelebi : .
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CONQUEST, URBANIZATION AND PLAGUE NETWORK S IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, –
Nükhet Varlık
A
n outbreak of plague in late sixteenth-century Istanbul was described in vivid detail from its outset by the contemporary historian Selaniki Mustafa Efendi (d. after ). After plague struck the city in , Mehmed III (–) ordered a communal prayer for the lifting of the plague. Prayers for the deceased followed for three weeks, during which time victims included one of the sultan’s favourite concubines, a son of the vezir Halil Paşa, and sixteen of the daughters of Murad III (–). More than people died in the Old Palace alone. Although the outbreak seems to have continued into the following year, it must have abated considerably in early autumn, as the sultan returned to the New Palace from his Bosphorus retreat in Küçüksu in October .1 How could such a dreadful state of affairs have come about when the empire was at its height of power and influence, and urbanization and commerce were thriving? Was there any correlation between the geopolitical expansion of the Ottoman sphere of influence, the intensification of urbanization throughout the empire, and the spread of devastating plague epidemics between and ? What frustrates the effort to explore these connections is the scanty evidence about the spread of plague in the Ottoman empire during this period. The example presented above is, for all its brevity, one of the more detailed accounts on record before the seventeenth century, and in many respects it is necessary to hypothesize on the basis of mere glimmerings of evidence. It has become commonplace to consider such questions in a global context in the light of the infamous pandemic of the mid-fourteenth century known as the Black Death (–), which spread through the Old World with a shocking virulence and was onlyuntil the the firstmid-nineteenth of a series of outbreaks continued to affect the Mediterranean world century. which Although there is some reason for optimism about the pertinence of general studies of pandemics to the Ottoman experience, there is also good reason to believe that, in the Ottoman case, recurrence of plague in the early modern era exhibited many features which are distinct from those associated with the global eruption of the Black Death itself. Despite these difficulties, there are some grounds for confidence about our ability to understand the reasons for the spread of plague in the Ottoman empire between and . Although it might appear that plague occurred in random bursts of
— Nükhet Varlık —
destruction, there are in fact three distinct phases, each one marked by a transition from what preceded it and closely correlated with the stages of Ottoman imperial development. This essay argues further that the rise and expansion of the Ottoman empire in respect of activities ranging from conquest to the establishment of new communication and trade networks was one of the most important factors in the recurrence of plague epidemics in the Mediterranean world during the early modern era. The specific relationship between the growth of the Ottoman empire and the resulting expansion of plague has so far gone unnoticed. In his authoritative work on the history of plague epidemics in France and the Mediterranean world, Jean-Noël Biraben noted that, incentury Europe,until the the number of the places infectedHe by also plague increased the mid-fifteenth end of sixteenth. observed thatfrom the same pattern of expansion was applicable to a broader region including the Balkan peninsula, Ukraine, the Caucasus, Anatolia, Iran, the Levant, and all of North Africa. 2 It is no coincidence that much of this area came under Ottoman rule during the same period, though Biraben makes nothing of this connection. While the expansion of plagues was matched by a simultaneous economic growth and population increase throughout the Mediterranean world, in both Ottoman and non-Ottoman regions,3 it should be possible nevertheless to study the trajectories of contagion in relation to the growth of the empire. Ottoman expansion prompted an increased level of communication and mobility between individual regions bound together by the commercial interests and the administrative and military organization of an early modern empire. This, in turn, promoted widespread and persistent plague outbreaks in a manner shaped by the conditions of the empire’s growth. When the initial wave of the Black Death arrived in Anatolia in , the Ottoman principality under the rule of Orhan (–) was a small regional emirate on the eastern periphery of the Byzantine empire. Already in the early decades of the fourteenth century, the Ottomans had captured important Byzantine strongholds in Bithynia such as Bursa () and Iznik (). On the eve of the Black Death, they had incorporated the lands of the neighbouring principality of Karesi, and thus had reached as far west as the Dardanelles. By the time plague arrived in Anatolia, Ottoman rule extended to almost all of the region south and east of the Sea of Marmara. Although the Black Death affected many areas of Anatolia – its presence in non-Ottoman cities such as Trabzon, Constantinople, Divriği (Tivrik), Antioch, Karaman and Kayseri (Caesarea) is well documented in historical sources 4 – our current knowledge of its presence in Ottoman lands is still rudimentary. We do not know precisely to what extent the Ottoman dominions were affected by this first outbreak, though analogies suggest that it must have been very destructive. Ottoman historical sources themselves provide little evidence for the presence of workingbefore plague in thisthefield, mid-fifteenth consider the century. following To convey example. theThe difficulties historianfaced Aşıkpaşazade by historians (d. after ) mentions the plague in one single, but significant, instance. Recounting how the Karesi principality was integrated into the Ottoman territories after the conquest of Bergama, Aşıkpaşazade tells how the Karesi prince was brought to Bursa, where he lived for two more years until he succumbed to plague. 5 Although the date of this event is not clear in Aşıkpaşazade’s account, our modern knowledge of the annexation of Karesi dates it to . Since the death of the prince is said to be two years later, this would have occurred in and provides some evidence that the
— Conquest, urbanization and plague networks —
Black Death was in Bursa in that year. This brief and isolated reference illustrates the paucity of contemporary sources pertaining to the plague and the need to contextualize them with other corroborating evidence. In this case, corroboration is to be found in a historical calendar from the fifteenth century, which confirms the occurrence of this outbreak.6 In , about a century after the initial wave of the Black Death, the Ottomans conquered the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. By the turn of the sixteenth century, they ruled large areas in Anatolia and the Balkans, and by they had further extended their dominions to include Syria, Egypt, Iraq, North Africa, parts of the Caucasus, of greater the Black Sea coasts, and all ofspread South-Eastern All oflands, these conquests most created opportunities for the of plagueEurope. to Ottoman by bringing them into contact with cities which were already established as centres of plague, such as Aleppo and Cairo. The conquest of Constantinople, a city with a notorious history of pestilence, was certainly one of the most significant turning points in this double process of simultaneous growth of empire and of disease. Located in the midst of trade routes connecting the Black Sea and its Eurasian hinterland, Anatolia, the Balkans and the Mediterranean, it was always at great risk of infection. Even though there had been plague outbreaks in Ottoman lands before – notably in Bursa again in –, an episode severe enough to be recorded in the historical calendars of the fifteenth century7 – both the frequency and the patterns of expansion of outbreaks after were dramatically different from those before that date. From the second half of the fifteenth century onwards, plague epidemics became a recurrent phenomenon in Ottoman cities and remained so until the mid-nineteenth century. 8 More specifically, the period from the conquest of Constantinople in until the end of the sixteenth century was when both the trajectories of contamination and the patterns of recurrence of outbreaks in Ottoman domains were set. What exactly was the nature of the relationship between the growth of the empire and that of the plague? The years between and can be generally characterized, on the one hand, by the growth of Ottoman rule through the conquest of key points for international trade and, on the other, by the creation of new urban areas. In respect of the former, various forms of human spatial mobility all seem to have played a part in the process of spreading the plague. The entire period is marked by intense warfare and military campaigns, resulting in regular movement of large bodies of men over vast distances. As a result of conquests and vassalage relationships, the Ottomans began to exert control over long-distance trade from the early fifteenth century onwards, and in the sixteenth were particularly keen to promote both maritime and overland routes. Conquest not only stimulated trade by providing a secure flow of goods, but simultaneously introduced new commercial linkages into the existingplague. networks of international trade. It other also provided mainmobility channel in forthe theform spread of Additional factors included means ofthe spatial of long-distance pilgrimage and migration. Urbanization is the other key characteristic. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed the rapid rise and development of many new urban clusters throughout the Ottoman realm. Urban clusters with dense populations where people lived in close proximity provided the best environment for the local spread of disease. In the sixteenth century, several villages in Anatolia grew into new towns and previously undistinguished smaller cities developed into thriving larger ones, where new industries
— Nükhet Varlık —
developed apace alongside prosperous trade. For example, in the only large cities in Anatolia possessing , inhabitants or more were Bursa and Ankara. By , eight more cities had reached that size: Konya, Kayseri, Kastamonu, Tokat, Sivas, Urfa, Ayntab and, in northern Syria, Aleppo. The number of medium-sized cities of between , and , inhabitants in Anatolia almost doubled in the sixteenth century.9 In each case, improved economic opportunities attracted new immigrants to cities and towns alike, which contributed to the manpower resources of emerging urban economies. As this new urbanization took hold, cities benefited from increasing civic and charitable enterprises. Building activities flourished in Ottoman urban centres, with schools, bathhouses and hospices beingimmigration constructed from at breakneck mosques, speed. Such citieshospitals, became magnets attracting constant the hinterlands, and preparing exactly the densely populated environment where plague would be most deadly. Two excellent examples illustrate this urban and migrational dynamic vis-à-vis the spread of contagion: Bursa, which connected the Persian segment of the silk road with Eastern Europe, and Edirne, which stood at the centre of trade between Istanbul and the Balkans. As the capital of the Ottoman principality in the fourteenth century, Bursa was its first major urban centre. Its role as a transit point for international trade in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is confirmed in the accounts of travellers who visited the city.10 The commercial dynamism of Bursa can also be traced in court records of the late fifteenth century. 11 By the mid-fifteenth century, Bursa had probably grown to have the same population range as Constantinople.12 The development of Bursa as a centre of international trade began immediately after its conquest. This is represented by such factors as the building of hospices for immigrants, the expansion of the city outside the walls, the construction of imperial and religious edifices and, as early as the s, the cultivation of a resident community of foreign merchants, especially Florentine and Genoese silk merchants. It was reported in the late fifteenth century that more cloth was manufactured in Bursa than in the whole of Italy. 13 Raw silk was brought from Iran and processed into cloth in the local industries of the city. Italian merchants would acquire processed, dyed and ornamented silk in exchange for Florentine woollen cloth.14 This trade in textiles appears to have been an especially important factor in the spread of contagion, as woollen cloth can harbour long-surviving, infected fleas. So too can fur, and it is therefore possible that the furs brought by Russian merchants from the late fifteenth century onwards could also have conveyed the deadly infestation.15 Another important urban centre, Edirne, developed rapidly in the early fifteenth century, when new residential areas began to spring up and transformed it from a provincial garrison town to an important nexus of trade and industry.16 The emergence of new residential the old city walls probably indicates that the17city had begun receivingquarters an influxoutside of immigrants attracted to its thriving economy. In fact, throughout the fifteenth century it attracted Venetian, Genoese, Catalan and Florentine merchants, some of whom reported that Edirne was equal in size to Florence.18 The rising importance of Edirne is further illustrated by the fact that many sultans throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries sponsored the construction of new buildings and religious establishments there, including mosques, schools, hospices, dervish lodges, bridges, bathhouses and hospitals.19 Although at first glance it may seem contradictory that the populations of Bursa,
— Conquest, urbanization and plague networks —
Edirne and other Ottoman towns and cities were increasing while, at the same time, plague was causing a significant death toll in urban areas, a closer look resolves this seeming contradiction. Firstly, pre-industrial population studies suggest that it is the birth rate, not the death rate, that accounts for demographic increase and decrease. 20 Loosely speaking, to understand population fluctuations it is not enough to know how many people die; rather, it is necessary to know how many are born. Therefore, although the earlier, shocking wave of the Black Death might have had a dramatic effect on urban populations, it ended abruptly; later recurring episodes of plague, on the contrary, might have served as a temporary check on rising urban populations, but didthroughout not necessarily determine a long-term decrease. Secondly, the population of towns, the early modern period, was sustained with a constant influx of migration from rural areas. Every time plague hit an urban centre and killed a certain proportion of its population, there would be an increased demand for labour and therefore renewed incentive to move there once the plague receded. Repeated outbreaks served merely as a momentary obstruction of population growth and, curiously, even offered urban centres the opportunity to increase population through migration and thus revitalize their commercial standing. The case of Istanbul after the Ottoman conquest perfectly illustrates this pattern.21 Immediately after the conquest, the repopulation of the city was one of the primary concerns of Mehmed II, who, for this purpose, announced that any fugitive who returned would be allowed to live there freely again. This was accompanied by the practice of demographic engineering known as sürgün – that is, compulsory resettlement of people in a different region under Ottoman control, including newly conquered lands. Istanbul after was a principal beneficiary of this policy. Still, despite these efforts, the increase in the city’s population was initially slow. A decade later, in , one of the worst onslaughts of plague broke out there and continued, . on and off, for about a decade until . However, according to Halil I nalcık, despite the loss caused by plague, the census of shows that the population of Istanbul was still as numerous as that of any city in the Mediterranean. 22 The following century was, however, a time of exceptional growth for Istanbul, where the rate of population increase was even greater than the average increase of per cent among all Ottoman cities. During this period, new neighbourhoods were formed and old ones became more heavily populated, by merchants, craftsmen and urban labourers from even the more remote corners of the empire. Beyond economic enticements, the welfare systems of the city provided by pious foundations also made it attractive for migration. These foundations met the needs for food, water, paved roads, public security, hospitals, clean streets and comfortable shelter for the city’s poor and impoverished travellers alike. 23 PERIODIZATION
Having surveyed the antecedent conditions for outbreaks of plague between and , it is now possible to view this period in three distinct phases, mostly determined by the scale and frequency of contagion: the first phase, from to , witnessed the emergence of the principal east–west Mediterranean axis; the second phase, from to , is characterized by the addition of a north–south axis and the gradual integration of multiple networks along the existing east–west axis; and in the third
— Nükhet Varlık —
phase, from to , Istanbul emerges as the nexus of both east–west and north– south axes (see map ). By ‘network’ is meant here the systemic connection between two or more places (towns, cities and regions), consisting of commercial, military and administrative linkages through which the spread of plague is facilitated. The first phase: –
During this first phase Ottoman lands witnessed two main waves of plague for a total of around twenty-five years. The first wave lasted for about a decade, between and . It broke out initially in Europe and was then communicated to Ottoman lands through Mediterranean ports, following both maritime and overland caravan routes through the Balkans. The infection most probably travelled from Venice to Ragusa (Dubrovnik), and then via Bosnia, Herzegovina, Macedonia and Thrace to reach Edirne, Gallipoli, Bursa, and possibly western parts of central Anatolia.24 Nowhere was this outbreak more devastating than in Istanbul in the summer of , as described graphically by the Greek historian Kritovoulos of Imbros. He records that, as the death toll reached deaths per day, many fled fearfully from the city, never to return, while others confined themselves to their residences and never went out, which made the city look deserted. According to Kritovoulos, many corpses remained unburied for days, since there were no workers to remove them, and even then two or more corpses would be buried in a single coffin without religious rites, as there were too few coffin-makers and men of religion to meet the demand.25 It is very hard to make any reliable estimate of the population of Istanbul in this period. If we accept the figure given by Kritovoulos, deaths per day, and assume that the outbreak lasted with the same intensity for one month, this gives a total of , deaths. More realistically, perhaps, since the outbreak lasted until early autumn, an estimated overall total of , to , deaths can be suggested. The population of the city has been estimated at around , in . A census taken after the plague in shows a population of between , and ,, though probably closer to the lower figure. 26 Therefore, the death rate for this first outbreak could have been at least one-third.27 A second major wave of infection lasted from to . Like the previous one, this was also introduced from Mediterranean port cities in Europe, either through overland or maritime trade routes, or both. In terms of scale, this wave affected an even larger area in Anatolia, which might be indicative of an increase in communication and mobility. Ottoman sources mention this outbreak as one of the most destructive plagues of the fifteenth century. According to the chronicler Oruç, a most devastating plague ravaged Anatolia, the Balkans, Egypt, Syria and Iran in . 28 The historian 29 Bernardo Mustafa (d. )that alsokilled mentions (mostly on the basis of the account of Oruç) this greatAli pestilence thousands. Michellozzi and Bonsignore Bonsignori, two Florentine gentlemen travelling in the Levant, confirm its presence in western Anatolia in the spring of .30 Independently, the Florentine merchant Giovanni Maringhi witnessed multiple outbreaks between and . 31 After , outbreaks continued sporadically for another decade in Ottoman and neighbouring regions.32 In this first phase, until , plague almost always spread to Ottoman lands through commercial contact with European port cities in the Mediterranean and
alr nte asi CA ot
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s u sc a m a o p p e l A
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iv d v o l P
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— Nükhet Varlık —
generally proceeded from coasts to inland regions. This pattern of propagation suggests that the networks through which plague spread to Ottoman cities functioned along a main east–west Mediterranean axis. The plague trajectory during the sixtyfour years between and correlates closely with the formation of new trade and communication networks connecting Istanbul to the European port cities of the Mediterranean. Equally significant in the first period are the intervals between outbreaks in the Ottoman lands. Such outbreaks seem to have occurred with an average interval of ten years, which is similar to the intervals between outbreaks in both eastern and western Mediterranean cities ininEgypt the post-Black Death An has average of as recurrence for plague outbreaks between andera. been interval calculated between 33 eight and nine years and in Syria as . years. Intervals of eleven to twelve years occurred in France for the period to . 34 However, the intervals between plague outbreaks in Ottoman lands decreased in duration from onwards, when new mobility networks and pathways for the spread of plague arose simultaneously. The second phase: –
The conquests of and mark a major turning point in Ottoman history, not least in the doubling of the geographic size of the empire and of its population. The acquisition of Syria, Egypt and the Hijaz was important not only for bringing the former Mamluk lands and the Muslim Holy Cities under Ottoman control, but also because it enhanced the position of the Ottomans in the Mediterranean as a whole.35 Via the Red Sea, the Ottomans also gained access to the Indian Ocean and to its lucrative trade in spices and textiles. It is possible, too, that eastern acquisitions served as new channels of plague contamination, even in territories beyond the easternmost periphery of the Ottoman world. There was a twofold effect of such conquest and expansion: on the one hand, there were more intensified outbreaks in regions already struck by plague as well as eruptions in regions hitherto unaffected by it, and, on the other hand, in major urban centres intervals between episodes reduced from an average of ten years to three.36 This second phase is dominated by several major waves of plague, the three most important of which took place between and , and , and and .37 In order to have a sense of the death rates during the last of these outbreaks, consider the account of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Habsburg ambassador to the Ottoman empire between and . One of his servants and his doctor having succumbed to plague, Busbecq was granted permission by the sultan to take refuge outside the city. Visitors from Istanbul informed him that, during the course of three months, its height to , people at its lowest the end ofat that period, merely died per died day, each whichday wasand interpreted to point mean near that 38 the plague was receding. It is important to note here the alarming increase in death rates compared with the figures of the previous century. In contrast to the first phase between and , when outbreaks of plague spread along the main east–west axis of the Mediterranean, the second phase is best characterized, firstly, by the emergence of a new north–south axis and, secondly, by the incorporation of further tangential networks of trade and communication along the existing east–west axis. An additional factor which may have supplemented both
— Conquest, urbanization and plague networks —
the north–south but especially the east–west axis of exchange after was the spectacular rise of piracy in the Mediterranean – a claim supported by Biraben.39 Generally speaking, the spread of outbreaks now followed a more complex pattern of expansion, limited not merely to the Mediterranean basin but including also the networks of the Black Sea and its Eurasian hinterlands, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. All urban centres, among them Cairo, Aleppo, Damascus, Salonica, Edirne, Trabzon, Erzurum, and many others, were repeatedly affected. However, of far greater importance for north–south interaction within the Mediterranean in particular is the increased significance of maritime trade and communication under Ottoman control. the conquests of –, neededdirect to maintain a large fleet Following to communicate safely between Egyptthe andOttomans Istanbul, particularly for the provisioning of Istanbul with the produce of the Nile valley, and for securing the pilgrimage route to the Muslim Holy Cities. The conquest of the island of Rhodes in was essential to ensure the unobstructed passage of Ottoman ships. A north–south administrative and commercial connection in the eastern Mediterranean then developed, which, already in the early s, served as a new north–south channel for the spread of plague. An early example is connected with the conquest of Rhodes. Although there is little definite evidence to support it, there are indications that plague could have been brought from Rhodes to the Ottoman mainland immediately after the siege. A certain . Isa made a claim in court that his brother, a military commander, had died of plague in Iznik while returning to Istanbul from the Rhodes campaign.40 However, we do not know if this soldier and others contracted the disease in Rhodes or at another point on their journey home, which passed through Marmaris, Mug˘la, Sultanhisar, Alaşehir, Akhisar, Mihalıç, Mudanya, Gemlik and Üsküdar on their way to Istanbul.41 To offer a more general illustration of the prominence of the newly established north–south network, consider the relationship between Istanbul and Cairo. Before , when there was no regular or direct maritime connection between these two cities, plague probably did not circulate between them; when it did break out in each city between and , it was probably the result of their individual contacts with European port cities, especially Venice. However, after , whenever there was an outbreak in Cairo, it typically spread to Istanbul, and vice versa. This provides additional evidence of the new north–south connection. Furthermore, the presence of plague in – in several locations in the Aegean and Adriatic regions and the western Anatolian coast, as well as Epirus, Morea, the Venetian colonies of Crete, Corfu and Zante, and in the Archipelago,42 indicates that, immediately after the conquest of Rhodes, the north–south network for the spread of plague was being integrated into the previously existing east–west network. the period Firstly, to , factors conditioned the development of andoubled AnatolianInurban network. the two urban population of Anatolian towns roughly between and .43 Secondly, the incorporation of eastern Anatolia and territories beyond meant that, by the s, the entire peninsula had become a relatively well-integrated area under Ottoman rule. The first eastern military expedition during the reign of Süleyman (–) was undertaken between and , resulting in the conquest of the eastern Anatolian cities of Bitlis, Erzurum and Van. 44 A direct link was thus provided to Tabriz, which is of singular significance here in that plague may have been brought to Tabriz by Ottoman armies. 45
— Nükhet Varlık —
After these conquests, all of Anatolia experienced an explosion of urban growth, and solid links were forged between existing Ottoman possessions and newly conquered cities.46 So, it could be hypothesized that, while in the first period plague outbreaks had not spread far into central and eastern Anatolia, in the second period the entire peninsula began to suffer widespread outbreaks. A plague outbreak in affected several towns in eastern and south-eastern Anatolia. Evidence for this is found when the fearful flight of soldiers from a plague outbreak in the fortress of Hınıs is mentioned in an order sent from the central administration in March to the director of the provincial treasury ( mal defterdarı) of Diyarbekir and the governor-general 47
(beylerbeyi Later in).the mid-sixteenth century, a similar process occurred around the Black Sea. Süleyman annexed lower Moldavia, Transylvania became a tributary state, and the conquest of the coastal strip of the lower Danube allowed land contact with the vassal state of the khanate of Crimea. 48 By the mid-sixteenth century, the Black Sea had fallen wholly under Ottoman control. This offered the additional benefit of safeguarding the Muslim pilgrimage route from Central Asia and encouraging the revival of Anatolian cities on the Black Sea coast, such as Trabzon and Sinop, both as important urban centres and as trade entrepôts. Therefore, the revitalization of the Black Sea network, in particular its integration into both the north–south network of the eastern Mediterranean through Istanbul and into the Anatolian tangential network, provided yet another set of connections for the propagation of plague. The outbreak of – in Trabzon, when travel and trade were briefly disrupted, the elite fled the city, and even its environs were affected, clearly illustrates this case.49 The third phase: –
The definitive characteristic of the third phase is the situation of Istanbul as the principal nexus of the various communication, commercial and plague networks, concomitantly serving as the hub for the transmission of disease from one region of the empire to another. These networks had functioned semi-autonomously in the pre period; they lacked precisely the primary locus that Istanbul would provide after that date. It is especially important to understand this change in conjunction with what proved to be the most terrible plague outbreak of the sixteenth century. Beginning in , plague attacked areas as remote from one another as the Black Sea region and the North African coast, Western Europe and the Persian Gulf. It is possible to document the presence of plague in at least one location of the Ottoman empire for each year between and .50 This sustained eruption peaked in , , , 51
andThe between ofand ,with but respect continued well after . centrality Istanbul to plague is systematically attested in administrative documents. Mühimme registers (‘registers of important affairs’), which contain copies of orders sent from the Ottoman central government to provincial administrators, are particularly useful for tracing the movement of plague, especially in the last three decades of the sixteenth century. 52 Several mühimme cases contain striking evidence to suggest that the flow of information within the empire followed a similar trajectory to that followed by plague. Furthermore, these registers illustrate that, with the development of new networks of communication, there was a faster flow
— Conquest, urbanization and plague networks —
of information throughout the empire, always through Istanbul. This enabled the centre, now much better informed of what was happening throughout its domains, to monitor needs and respond to them in a timely fashion. Examples from Salonica prove the point. When hit by plague in the summer of , the woollen cloth weavers of Salonica petitioned for permission to leave the city because of the outbreak; this was granted by the central administration in Istanbul on the condition that they finish their weaving duties on time.53 The central administration sent another order during an especially virulent eruption of plague in –, which killed many in Salonica and reduced its workforce dramatically.54 Two years later, yet another order authorized thoseweaving who maintained the was city therefore to leave, in orderinvolved to prevent 55 Istanbul delaysonly in the of woollenlooms cloth.outside closely in Salonica’s experience of plague on three occasions in approximately seven years. This involvement illustrates not only the centrality of Istanbul but the rapidity of the flow of information between the centre and the provinces. After
Although it is beyond the scope of this study, it may be useful to comment briefly on how the processes described in this third phase paved the way for later developments in the history of plague in the Ottoman empire. 56 Speculatively, once Istanbul became the primary commercial and political hub of the Ottoman empire, land travellers and ships that would already have stopped at other cities or ports now visited Istanbul in greater numbers. One can only speculate about how far the number of plague-carrying agents, namely rats, would have increased in the city as a result of this visitation. It is possible that plague became endemic in Istanbul, which is to say in this context that the city was its own self-sustaining plague-producing engine. But it bears repeating that this is merely speculation. What we do know is that plague continued to recur almost every year throughout the seventeenth century, becoming even more of a routine or seasonal event. Of these the most important outbreaks took place in , –, –, , –, –, –, –, –, –, and from into the early years of the eighteenth century. Subsequent eighteenth-century outbreaks were reported as mostly minor, though major ones took place in , , –, –, –, – and –. However, although major outbreaks took place in – and –, plague epidemics gradually disappeared during the course of the nineteenth century, which is generally credited to the adoption of quarantine measures and their implementation from onwards.57 CONCLUSION
It has been argued here that, when the Ottoman empire consolidated its intersecting trade networks in the eastern Mediterranean, establishing contact with some of its remotest adjacent regions between and , a new set of conditions conducive to the spread of plague pandemics was established. This period can be divided into three different phases. During the first phase (–), outbreaks of plague almost always spread to Ottoman lands from European port cities of the Mediterranean. The networks, through which plague spread to Ottoman cities with an average
— Nükhet Varlık —
interval of ten years, operated along the main east–west axis in the Mediterranean world. With the conquest of southern regions such as Egypt and northern regions such as the Black Sea basin, outbreaks of plague started to spread in a more complex network of trajectories. It was during this second phase (–) that multiple networks of trade and communication tied the Mediterranean basin to regions as far away as the Indian Ocean, and the intervals between outbreaks were reduced to three years. The consolidation of these multiple networks showed its fullest results with the outbreak of , which continued almost unremittingly until the early decades of the seventeenth century. During this third phase (–) Istanbul emerged as the centre of intersection andplague communication between the multiple networks formed in the previous periods, and became almost a routine or seasonal event in most Ottoman cities. On such evidence, it is reasonable to conclude that the rapid growth of the Ottoman empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, through conquest, urbanization, and the establishment of trade and communication networks, was a significant factor facilitating the geographic spread of plague epidemics both in Ottoman lands and in adjacent regions in the early modern era. NOTES
Selâniki Mustafa Efendi : II, –, . Biraben : I, –. Faroqhi : . Schamiloğlu : –. Aşıkpaşazade : , .
:; .Turan : . Turan Atsız : For an in-depth study of plague epidemics in the Ottoman empire between and , see Panzac ; for a summary list of plagues –, see Varlık b; see also note below. Faroqhi : . Lowry b: , . İnalcık b. Lowry estimates the population of Bursa in the mid-fifteenth century as c.,. It exceeded , in the late fifteenth century, was over , in , and was around , in the late sixteenth century: Lowry b: –, , , . Cf. population figures for Istanbul in İnalcık . Borsook : ; Lowry b: –. Lowry b: , ; İnalcık a. İnalcık b: –. Kuran : –. Among Edirne’s industries were dyeing, tanning, soap-making, distillation of rose extract, car
riage-building andBorsook bookbinding ). Heyd : ; : (Gökbilgin . Kuran : –. Erder : . Varlık a: –. İnalcık . Ibid.. Varlık a: –. Kritovoulos : –. Kafesçioğlu : , ; İnalcık .
— Conquest, urbanization and plague networks —
Compare this with figures given by Lowry (c: ), who suggests a death toll between , and ,. Oruç Bey : . Âli : . During their journey from Constantinople to Rhodes via Bursa and Aegean coastal cities, Michellozzi and Bonsignori had to change their plans for visiting ancient sites upon receiving news of plague in the region. They took refuge on the island of Chios, where they stayed for a month waiting for the plague to abate (Borsook : ). Lowry b: –. E.g., plague was in Philippopolis/Filibe and Salonica in ; in Wallachia between and ; in Moldavia in ; and in Istanbul between and (Varlık a: –). Dols : –. Biraben : I, . Hess . For an insightful criticism of the historiography of plague in Egypt and the effect of the Ottoman conquest in bringing much increased frequency of plague, see Mikhail : esp. –. Varlık a: –, –. Busbecq : , –. Biraben : I, , . Seng : . Pitcher : . Schreiner : –; Biraben : ; Sticker : I, ; Varlık a: –. Faroqhi : , . Van was lost to the Safavids the following year, only to be reconquered in (Veinstein a). Hasan Rumlu : .
Faroqhi : .–, . Sahillioğlu : Veinstein a. Jennings : . Varlık a: –. Biraben : –. Varlık a: –. BOA, Mühimme Defteri [MD] , /. Faroqhi a: ; BOA, MD , /. BOA, MD , /. For the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, see the recent dissertations on Ottoman plague history by Ayalon , Bulmuş and Shakow . Panzac ; Varlık b.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE P ERIPHERA LIZAT ION O F THE OTTOMAN ALGERIAN ELITE
Tal Shuval
A
t the turn of the fifteenth century, after the fall of Granada in , a war zone in the western Mediterranean marked the area where the southwards-advancing Christian Iberian troops met the defensive, unorganized local North African Muslim forces. In their western policy the Ottomans were hampered until by dynastic problems, and their attention was focused on a continuing conflict with the Mamluks of Egypt. A war with Venice (–) prevented them from ending revolts in Albania. Above all, they had to deal with disturbances in western Anatolia and with the new threat posed by Safavid Iran in the east. Thus Ottoman efforts were concentrated in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Much as the events which took place in the western Mediterranean interested them, there was little they could do, and the small size of their fleet at the time prevented their assistance to the Muslims of Spain.1 And yet, irregular forces srcinating within the Ottoman empire not only participated in these events, they initiated the move that joined all of the North African shore, except Morocco, to the empire. Ottoman corsairs (‘privateers’) operating in the region managed to take the city of Algiers and its hinterland; in their leader Hayreddin Barbarossa placed the territory he controlled under Ottoman sovereignty. In return, Selim I (–) sent him troops and artillery.2 This marked the foundation of what was to become a new Ottoman province. With the creation of this North African province emerged an elite group which, during the next three hundred years of Ottoman rule, adjusted itself to changing circumstances. It maintained a basic tripartite structure – a governor, a terrestrial army (the janissary corps – the ocak) and a corsair fleet (the taifa) – but the balance of power between profoundly, as did relations the and imperial government in Istanbul.them Thesechanged two factors, namely the inner power with struggle relations with Istanbul, were mutually connected and so affected each other and were, in turn, affected by other factors. In analysing the Ottoman North African province(s) from to the end of the eighteenth century, I will also show that, even though there are features unique to Ottoman Algeria, it was still one Ottoman province among many others, and that the changes in its relations with the centre, while greatly influencing its elite behaviour, did not alter its will or need to belong to the empire.
— The peripheralization of the Ottoman Algerian elite —
The province Cezayir-i Garp (Ottoman Algeria) was a new geopolitical entity established by the Ottomans. By the end of the sixteenth century its borders were roughly the city of Tlemcen in the west and Constantine in the east, the Mediterranean in the north and the southern slopes of the Saharan Atlas in the south. Its population on the eve of the French conquest in is estimated at million. Only to per cent of the population lived in an urban environment, the rest being sedentary, semi-nomads and nomads. The Ottomans were concentrated mainly in the cities, where they remained a group apart. Their biggest concentration was in the city of Algiers, which they made their capital. Unlike the situation in other provinces, where during theruling eighteenth a greatAlgerian many members of localvery elites penetrated the Ottoman group,century the Ottoman elite remained much impenetra3 ble. Local recruitment of Janissaries, which became so important elsewhere in the empire, did not represent more than per cent in Ottoman Algeria.4 For most of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Ottoman Algerian elite relied on military superiority in order to rule the province, but during the eighteenth century ‘force gradually gave way to diplomacy in the relations between the Turks and the indigenous population’.5 THE GOVERNOR
The Ottoman Algerian elite grew around Hayreddin Paşa in his position as governor-general (beylerbeyi) and was composed of men related to his household, mainly naval officers of the Algerian corsair fleet.6 The janissary corps functioned initially as a military force at the service of the governor, enabling him to rule over the province and to protect it. During most of the sixteenth century the supremacy of the governor was therefore unchallenged, as was the precedence of the corsairs over the Janissaries. In Hayreddin was called to Istanbul to become grand admiral of the Ottoman fleet (kapudan paşa, –). His ascendancy corresponded with the growing importance of the Ottoman fleet, and as admiral he himself enjoyed special privileges. He was the first admiral also to be appointed concurrently to the vezirate, as fourth vezir.7 The importance of the North African province as an active war zone between two empires and the special status that its governor enjoyed in Istanbul are demonstrated in an account of the aftermath of the catastrophic failure of Charles V of Spain to conquer Algiers in . According to the eighteenth-century Algerian chronicle al-Zahra al-Na’ira, Algeria’s acting governor in the name of Hayreddin, Hasan Ağa, wrote to the High Divan, informing them how God had worked in favour of the people of Algiers and against their then sent a galley with the letterthe to his Highness the Sultan. Upon his enemy. arrival atHeQustantiniyya [Constantinople], messenger took the letter to Hayreddin Paşa and told him about what happened in Algiers. Hayreddin then took him by the hand [to the sultan] and again [the messenger] spoke about Hasan Ağa. On hearing the news, the sultan sent him [Hasan Aga] a magnificent robe of honour and an imperial edict including in it his [Hasan Aga’s] appointment to the Sultan’s deputy in Algiers, and his [Hayreddin’s] promotion to the rank of vezir. 8
— Tal Shuval —
Both the direct connection between the province and the centre, and between the governor-general and the sultan, and the importance of events in the province to the centre are evident. For most of the sixteenth century after , the North African province was under the direct rule of Istanbul. Its strategic position was such that ‘turbulent frontier acts in North Africa could very easily have drawn the Ottoman Empire into war’. 9 Therefore direct influence over the province, and a relatively quick way of making the centre’s orders obeyed there, was an absolute necessity. Central authority is evident, rather perversely, in the abortive attempt to conquer the city of Wahran (Oran), on the western coast Algeria, its Spanish garrison. In , Hasan problematic Korso (governor –) was onofthe verge from of taking this city, which was particularly for the Ottoman province, when a messenger arrived from Istanbul with the sultan’s order to raise the siege and send the fleet to the Greek archipelago instead. This order was followed to the letter, even though it left the governor and his army outnumbered and in an awkward situation.10 The growing importance of the Ottoman fleet and the naval experience of the corsairs enhanced the ties between the Ottoman Algerian elite and the centre. Some governors also had patrons in very high places in Istanbul, like Hayreddin’s son Hasan Paşa (governor –, –, –), who was a protégé of the grand vezir Rüstem Paşa.11 In this sense, during the sixteenth century, the province provided a gateway into the higher echelons of the Ottoman military-administrative hierarchy. For example, although in total very few experienced seamen held the post of admiral of the Ottoman navy, the principal holders in the sixteenth century – Hayreddin Paşa (–), Kılıç Ali Paşa (–) and Uluç Hasan Paşa (–) – all started their careers in North Africa.12 Also, according to the Ottoman biographical dictionary Sicill-i Osmani, the governorship of Algeria was only one of many posts such men held. Turgut Paşa, a client of Hayreddin and a leading corsair, became governor of Tarablusgarb (Tripoli in present-day Libya) in . Although offered the post of admiral together with the governorship of Algeria, he declined the offer,13 remaining governor of Tarablusgarb with promotion to the rank of beylerbeyi. In he received the governorship of Algeria as well. 14 Mehmed Paşa (wrongly given as the son of Hayreddin) was a naval officer who became, successively, governor of Algeria and governor of Tunisia.15 The list continues, but the point is that, during the sixteenth century, high-ranking officers who served as governor of Algeria could hope for promotion, and their service there was one post among others they were likely to hold. In other words, service in Algeria was not the ‘dead end’ it became in later centuries. However, the fate of the Ottoman Algerian elite was closely linked with the importance of their province in the general framework of the empire. The apex in this sense was year the period the official establishment of the province III and(– , the Philip between II of Spain (–) and the Ottoman sultan in Murad ) agreed to a truce that marked out the frontier between the Muslim territories and Christian lands of the western Mediterranean. 16 According to Colin Imber, the empire had begun to disengage from the western Mediterranean even before : the Franco-Spanish peace of , which signified that the sultan could no longer use his alliance with France as an instrument of aggression, and the failure of the siege of Malta in essentially put an end to the sultan’s westward ambitions against Christian-held territories.17 However, a dominant Ottoman influence in the western
— The peripheralization of the Ottoman Algerian elite —
Mediterranean was maintained for longer than that, with the definitive conquest of the much contested city of Tunis in more than compensating for the Ottoman disaster at the battle of Lepanto in . 18 Nevertheless, Ottoman supremacy at sea in the Mediterranean was indeed lost by the end of the sixteenth century. Following the Ottoman–Spanish treaty of , the North African province was divided into three different provinces, each with its own governor, normally sent from Istanbul for a term of three years. This move corresponded with the decline in the region’s importance in the eyes of the empire’s rulers, for it signified the change from the direct rule of Istanbul over the corsair beylerbeyis to indirect rule via career men from the centre, forItwhom governing thewith province was more of aoffinancial investment than anything else. also corresponded the transformation the Ottoman fiscal system from one based on prebendal grants to a more monetary one. During most of the sixteenth century Algeria seems to have been integrated in the timar (fief) system. However, by the end of the century the empire’s ever-growing need for money to meet its military and bureaucratic salaries led to the gradual replacement of the timar system by iltizam (tax farming), which affected the North African provinces as it did other provinces.19 On the death of Kılıç Ali Paşa in , the srcinal province was divided into three. Aziz Samih explains this division as due to the imperial divan (council)’s fear that the province’s powerful governors would secede from the empire. In his view, aligning the administration of the North African provinces with that of other provinces constituted a miscalculation by the imperial divan. The North African provinces did not resemble other regions, where local soldiers and their superiors regarded the governors sent by the sultan as respectable and sacred. The Janissaries of Cezayir-i Garp, Tunus and Trabalusgarb (i.e., Ottoman Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania) were completely different in character, believing that they could act as they pleased and remain unpunished. 20 Although Samih’s explanation for the division is debatable, he does point to a significant change in the character of these provinces, and of their relations with the centre. Until the division, most governors were men who were closely connected above all with corsair activity and whose careers developed firstly and mainly in North Africa. After the division, governors were mainly pashas sent from Istanbul for a term of three years – hence their designation by historians as ‘triennial pashas’. Although this change in the nature of office-holding was also part of a general development in the militaryadministrative system throughout the empire, it seems to have had a particularly negative effect on the status of the triennial pashas. 21 During most of the sixteenth century many of Algeria’s governors belonged to the household founded by Hayreddin or households related to it. Through their corsair links, they were well integrated into the ruling Ottoman Algerian elite, benefited from the province’s closeboth relations in theand centre, and usually had realrelatively control over wingswith of theIstanbul, military:had thepatrons corsair fleet the janissary army. It was not the same for the triennial pashas. Having bought their post of governor of Algeria, they had no intimate knowledge of the region or previous relations with members of the Ottoman Algerian elite. Career men from the centre, most had no knowledge of the sea.22 Also, in practice, their term in office was actually shorter than three years: between and , twenty-seven appointments were made, an average of one every twenty-two months (although, because many pashas served more than one term, only eighteen different persons can be counted). 23 In contrast to the
— Tal Shuval —
direct control of Istanbul over Algeria during the sixteenth century, the period of the triennial pashas was characterized by a more distant and indirect rule. The distance separating Istanbul from its Algerian province seemed to grow, and most of the triennial pashas could not count on any help from the centre, should the need arise. JA NI SSAR IES AN D COR SAI RS
As mentioned above, the Ottoman Algerian janissary corps was established in , when Selim I sent the first contingent to Hayreddin Paşa. Thereafter, estimates of janissary numbers vary considerably, from , in the early sixteenth century to , during the seventeenth century. Reliable numbers are available only from the beginning of the eighteenth century, when around , Janissaries are recorded in the ocak’s registers; this number decreased towards the end of the century. During the eighteenth century the behaviour of the Algerian Janissaries differed from that of Janissaries in other Arab provinces of the empire: they did not undergo the process of ‘localization’ described by Toledano,24 continuing instead to recruit new members from Anatolia; their marriage rate was very low; and their involvement in non-military economic occupations was even lower.25 During the seventeenth century the role of the Algerian janissary corps in the province’s decision-making mechanism strengthened, to the detriment of the governor’s authority. As elsewhere in the Ottoman empire, the decision of the central government to limit the length of tenure of a post and to organize a system of balancing authority facilitated opposition to the governors from the military institutions or the local forces.26 This process culminated in Algeria in with the stripping by the Janissaries of all real power from the governor. The first decades of the seventeenth century marked the zenith of the second force in the province’s military-administrative elite, the corsair taifa. Until the admiral of the Algerian fleet (kapudan reis) was appointed by the sultan and was subordinate to the Ottoman grand admiral.27 Having worked his way up in the corsair fleet, often from being a Christian captive (i.e., slave), to the head of the taifa, the admiral was well integrated in the province. Standing at the head of an organization regarded by historians as the provider of revenue for the province, the admiral and his men were considered too formidable a force to be controlled by the governor or by the janissary corps.28 Even if we accept the estimate of , to , 29 as the number of people (other than slaves) directly or indirectly involved with corsair activity in , when the Algerian fleet was at its height, the number of actual taifa members – that is, of the reis (sea captains) – was much smaller. Their strength came from their wealth and from the number of people under their command. However, the situation changed during the course the seventeenth century. fortotheappoint declinepalace in theschool powergraduof the corsairs areofvaried. At the imperial level,The thereasons tendency ates to the highest naval ranks meant that Ottoman Algerian seamen gradually lost both their importance as eventual leaders of the imperial navy and their connections with the centre. This was further accentuated by the gradual reduction of the Ottoman fleet and the limitation of its scope of actions to the protection of grain and pilgrimage routes in the eastern Mediterranean. Technologically, the introduction of the betterarmed ‘round ship’ into the Mediterranean resulted in an increase of European power and led to a general decline in corsair revenues. More generally, a combination of their
— The peripheralization of the Ottoman Algerian elite —
lack of interest in the actual administration of the province and the decline in the revenue appears to have gradually weakened the taifa. All this produced a very noticeable change in the province’s internal balance of power between the three components of the Ottoman Algerian elite: the Istanbul-appointed governor, the mainly Anatolianrecruited janissary corps, and the corsair taifa, whose members were recruited mainly from prisoners of war. This change, in its turn, influenced the relations between the imperial centre and the Ottoman Algerian elite as a whole. This change is clearly manifested in the mid-seventeenth century, when the central government of the empire was, in Mantran’s description, in a state of disintegration.30 In many clashes outable between the janissary janissary pay. corpsMany and governors the governors, whoAlgeria, found themselves lessbroke and less to ensure were imprisoned by the Janissaries for that reason, the first being Hüseyn Paşa in . 31 At least one of the heads of the taifa, the Italian convert Ali Biçnin, seized the opportunity to improve his position vis-à-vis the imperial centre by taking over the actual government of the province as well as commanding its navy. His trajectory illustrates the change in the province’s situation vis-à-vis Istanbul. According to Père Hérault, a European eyewitness of many of the events in Algiers at that time, between and the Redemptionist fathers and the Christian captives considered Ali Biçnin the real governor.32 The situation in the province in general, and in its capital Algiers in particular, favoured this chief of the Algerian navy, whose personal wealth and post of commander of the still militarily strong and economically indispensable taifa made him the most influential person in the province. In , when ordered by Murad IV (–) to join the Ottoman fleet in its war against Venice, he complied and suffered heavy losses in men and materiel, including many of his slaves and his personal ships. The compensation promised by the sultan never arrived. Later, Ali Biçnin started guaranteeing the payment of the Janissaries. It is not clear when he took over this role of paymaster, but it is known that the official governor, Cemal Yusuf Paşa, was imprisoned in for not paying the Janissaries, as was his successor, Bursalı Mehmed Paşa, for the same reason. Their successor Ali Paşa avoided this treatment by taking refuge in a sanctuary.33 According to Père Hérault, Biçnin was already paying the Janissaries by the end of .34 In he received an order from Murad IV’s successor Ibrahim (–) to join the Ottoman fleet on its way to attack the Knights of Malta, but refused to obey. He stayed in Algiers when the two emissaries sent by the sultan arrived with an order to execute him, and even protected these emissaries from the mob which threatened to kill them. Later on, at the end of May , he suddenly left the city ‘to avoid paying the militia’. 35 It seems that, having reached the highest echelons of power in the province, Ali Biçnin wished to be integrated into the imperial military-administrative elite and be 36
appointed Some claim that hehim wasback promoted to the of admiral of governor. the Ottoman navyhistorians as a means of luring to the city of rank Algiers, and that his death on the way there was caused by poisoning. 37 All agree that his sudden death seems very suspect: ‘without a doubt, [the new Pasha, Ahmad] had received secret instructions [to assassinate him], since shortly after his [the pasha’s] arrival Biçnin suddenly died’.38 It appears that Biçnin had tried to negotiate a promotion in the imperial hierarchy by proceeding in two opposite ways. Initially, he acted as a good and loyal subject of the sultan, joining his personal naval force to the Ottoman navy in the war against
— Tal Shuval —
Venice. Later, when the sultan’s representative in Algeria was unable to pay the troops, Biçnin took this upon himself as a way to ensure order and to strengthen his claim by adding the support of the Janissaries to that of the corsairs. In this way he hoped to demonstrate that he was the real governor and head of the taifa. Having failed in this effort, he then seems to have tried forcing the sultan to promote him, first by refusing to participate in the naval effort of and then by abandoning his self-assumed role as paymaster of the Janissaries (which must already have cost him a great deal of money).39 Despite the seemingly self-destructive implications of such actions, turning against the central government was a method frequently used by ambitious men during the seventeenth century exactofpromotion and other the state. According to Barkey, in hertostudy the Anatolian movement, from the attitude of celalı concessions government officials reinforced and rewarded such blackmail: ‘promoting these bandits, incorporating them, making sure that they felt honored was worth the effort since incorporation meant peace and armies’.40 A study of those cases of rebels who succeeded in improving their position shows the importance of having patrons in the state administration.41 Biçnin’s failure emphasizes his lack of connections in Istanbul.42 THE REVOLUTION OF THE AGHAS
The hundred years that separate the death of Hayreddin in from that of Ali Biçnin left deep marks on Algeria’s position in the empire. The once very important, directly ruled province was very rapidly becoming a distant, albeit irritating, one. It seems that the only person with some connections to the centre was the governor, but the decline of his power within the province suggests that he had become a relatively low grade official.43 This, in its turn, hints at the marginalization of Algeria now that the interests of the centre lay elsewhere. A clear demonstration of Algeria’s loss of importance can be seen in the event known as ‘the revolution of the aghas’, and in the way it was handled by the grand vezir Köprülü Mehmed Paşa (in office –). In the governor of Algeria, Ibrahim Paşa, took a large sum of money that was destined for the corsairs and sent it to Istanbul. This caused a general row on the part of the corsairs and the Janissaries. Ibrahim Paşa was jailed, and his successor, already on his way from Istanbul, judged it more prudent not to disembark in Algiers and returned to Izmir.44 The janissary council, which since the beginning of the seventeenth century had been the real government of the province, decided to depose the pasha and to transfer the governor’s authority to one of themselves, with the title of agha (ağa).45 In essence, ‘the revolution of the aghas’ was one of many similar events which characterized the empire as a whole in this period. Many new governors arrived at their post, only to meet resistance, and were forced to return to Istanbul empty 46 Thissent handed. was the Ahmed thecity. governor from Istanbul This to Aleppo in case, for andexample, who waswith refused entryPaşa, to the situation lasted until , when Köprülü Mehmed Paşa began rigorous action to restore law and order, executing rebels and unsuccessful military leaders and sending armies to quash rebellions in different parts of the empire.47 Yet, in the case of the revolution of the Algerian aghas, the grand vezir took a completely different course of action.
This impudence of the Algerians angered him, and in his rage he ordered the unfortunate pasha [Ibrahim Paşa’s successor] to be brought from Izmir and
— The peripheralization of the Ottoman Algerian elite —
executed. He then sent an imperial edict [ ferman] to the Algerians saying: ‘Well then, a vali will not be sent to you. You may pledge allegiance to whoever you like. The Padişah [sultan] has no need for your kind of service. He has a thousand countries like Algeria. There is no difference [for him] whether Algeria exists or not. From now on, you are not allowed to approach the Ottoman shores.48 Moreover, the messenger sent from the Algerian divan upon receipt of this letter, with the conciliatory message that the province was willing to accept any pasha that the sultan would send them, ‘even a dog’, was not accepted by the grand vezir. It was not until Köprülü Mehmed’s death indivan ,’s and appointment of his 49 son Fazil Ahmetafter as grand vezir, that the Algerian letterthe could be presented. This unusual reaction on the part of Köprülü Mehmed Paşa appears to be a clear indication of the unimportance of this remote North African province. If, as suggested by Hess, we judge the effort invested in certain actions taken by the central administration not by comparison with the way things were done during the sixteenth century, but rather by understanding what was the desired result, then there was no reason to embark upon costly operations in order to achieve unimportant goals. 50 Köprülü Mehmed Paşa’s reaction seems to confirm both Hess’s suggestion and Algeria’s marginality in the second half of the seventeenth century. This marginality appears to stem from the decline in importance of the western Mediterranean for the empire after the treaty of , and also from the fact that the Ottoman Algerian elite had lost its strong connections to the centre. Contrary to Jane Hathaway’s assertion that ‘the administrative dynamic of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries does not present a clear-cut case of the central government facing off against provincial elites’,51 the grand vezir’s reaction to the revolution of the aghas was just such a facing off. Hathaway’s explanation for the lack of such actions on the part of the central administration is that these provincial elites included transplanted members of the central administration and their clients; moreover, they often modeled the structures through which they operated on prototypes at the center. Perhaps the most noteworthy example of such a structure is the elite household, a conglomerate of kinship and clientage ties that not only drew inspiration from the households of the sultan and his viziers but often enjoyed clientage ties of its own to these central households.52 If this description fitted the Ottoman Algerian elite in the sixteenth century, it was no longer the case in the second half of the seventeenth century. Ottoman elite house53 Although holds certainly existed in Algeria, but ininthe seventeenth centurypashas they seem havefrom had no connections with elite households Istanbul. weretosent Istanbul until , after the revolution of the aghas real power resided in the hands of the person chosen by the members of the Ottoman Algerian elite, who, except for a short time between and , came from the ranks of the Janissaries. The pashas themselves were stripped of any real power and were forbidden from interfering in the governing of the province. They were apparently paid handsomely enough to make the post worth their while, and oversaw the administration of the city of Algiers with its hinterland. However, they lost all responsibility for tax collection and for paying
— Tal Shuval —
the troops, as well as the actual command of the army.54 In terms of relations with the centre, this situation meant that the governor’s household had definitively lost its role of recruiting elite members and integrating them into the imperial militaryadministrative elite. Later, when the pasha was no longer sent from Istanbul but appointed by the Algerian divan and simply approved by the sultan, the last possible ties between an Ottoman Algerian household and any important household in the centre were severed. The revolution of the aghas instigated permanent changes in the Ottoman Algerian elite’s inner structure and in its relations with Istanbul. It brought about a period of uncertainty whichwas thechosen janissary corps the strongest component within this elite, and so during its governor from thewas corps. The period of uncertainty lasted fifty-two years (–), during which fifteen of the sixteen aghas and dey s who governed the province were assassinated; before only one of more than thirty governing pashas had suffered a similar fate. The only person to emerge from the later period in Algeria to occupy a high rank in the military-administrative hierarchy was Hüseyin Paşa Mezzo Morto, governor from to , and in also appointed pasha by the sultan. He was eventually chased from Algeria by the Janissaries and fled to Istanbul, where he subsequently became admiral of the Ottoman navy. But his case was exceptional, and the fact that he was a corsair and not a Janissary seems partly to explain his different career trajectory. The reason for the sudden appearance of violence as a means to replace the head of the Ottoman Algerian elite was the fact that, as long as the sultan continued sending pashas to Algeria, the actual governors were deprived of the protection that legitimization by the sultan could have assured them. Moreover, during this period factions appeared in the janissary corps, each with its demands and its candidate for post of governor. These factions formed around men who were themselves Janissaries or around men of religion or corsairs. 55 They destabilized the province and had to be suppressed, if not eliminated, before Ottoman Algeria could enter a new phase of existence, with a much more regulated governing system and the establishment of a modus vivendi with the imperial centre. Change came with the ascent to power of Sökeli Ali Çavuş (–). According to Laugier de Tassy, in charge of the chancery of the French embassy in Algiers in , he ‘strangled, and otherwise destroyed, no less than seventeen hundred persons’, 56 thereby putting an end to the situation where even a private soldier, after a small exercise and tryal [sic] under these colours, has the ambition to think himself considerable enough, either to push for the kaftan himself, or to contribute at least in the promotion of another to it.57 Having eliminated his enemies, Sökeli Ali Çavuş was nominated pasha by the sultan. Under his tenure, the dey’s situation was profoundly changed. No longer primus inter pares, but now a representative of the sultan, surrounded by the high officials of the province, he established a more or less orderly transfer of power within the selfcontained Ottoman Algerian elite that functioned until the very beginning of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the acquisition of the title of pasha seems to have resolved the threat to the governor’s life for the rest of the eighteenth century: between and , of the nine governors of Algeria, seven died in their beds. As for the
— The peripheralization of the Ottoman Algerian elite —
power struggle between the janissary corps and the taifa, already by the end of the seventeenth century the corsairs’ much reduced organization had been integrated into the ocak, and the admiral took his orders from the governor. The crisis in relations between the province and the centre following the revolution of the aghas in taught the Ottoman Algerian ruling elite an important lesson: their need to belong to the empire was greater than the empire’s need for them. Their dependence on the empire was great, stemming partly from their local need for the sultan’s legitimization, but mainly from their precarious position vis-à-vis the European powers. This was one of the reasons that Hayreddin joined the empire in the first place, and its theconquest elite werebyreminded of itarmy againinand again from the creation the province until the French . Such reminders wereofmanifested by hostile naval demonstrations of power, a bombardment of Algiers from the sea, and several attempts to conquer it by European (mainly Spanish) forces. The strength of the elite, and indeed their survival, depended on being part of a strong empire. From the revolution of the aghas onwards, a very ‘Ottoman’ behaviour characterized the Algerian elite regarding the imperial centre: a constant demonstration of loyalty to the empire and its governors, together with a jealous guarding of the province’s autonomy vis-à-vis the same centre. But the Ottoman Algerian elite opted for a way of achieving its goals which was different to that of other Ottoman provincial elites, in particular the neighbouring North African provinces of Tunisia and Tripoli. The Algerian elite left the key to the continuity of its system in the hands of the sultan: namely, it recruited as Janissaries mainly landless peasants in parts of the empire other than Algeria, principally in areas that are included in today’s Turkey. Elsewhere in the empire, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are characterized by local recruitment to such an58extent that ‘the military from local srcins dominated the odjak [the Ottoman elite]’. By contrast, in Algeria the number of locally recruited members of the elite stayed exceptionally low until . Ottoman Algerian elite members were therefore not integrated into the local elite, especially in the city of Algiers, which was the seat of the government and residence for most of them. It seems that the reason for such unusual behaviour was an ‘ideology’ of preserving the elite’s ‘Turkishness’ as a means of demonstrating its loyalty to the centre.59 It was also a sign of recognition by Algeria’s rulers of their dependency on the centre’s good will. During the eighteenth century, Ottoman Algeria was a peripheral province of the empire in more ways than one, and its elite led an almost separate existence from the rest of the empire in career terms. Having been recruited in the centre of the empire at an early age, soldiers were sent to Algeria, where they spent all of their active life. Thus, practically all high-ranking officers and administrators in the Ottoman Algerian elite had started their careers in Algeria as simple recruits and had worked their way up using at (among other means) the household system. But the marginality the province that time is reflected alsoelite by the size of elite households, which were of much smaller than those of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries: as many as or even slaves and more for the earlier period, but later only twenty to thirty.60 CONCLUSION
During the three hundred years of its existence, Ottoman Algeria was transformed from an important frontier province directly ruled by the imperial centre into a remote,
— Tal Shuval —
peripheral province. The Ottoman Algerian elite began its existence as a tripartite group, whose power and significance was based upon the importance of its leaders as talented seamen in an empire at the apex of its naval power. However, already by the turn of the seventeenth century, the province’s importance to the centre was greatly reduced. No longer an active frontier between two empires, it was governed by career men sent from Istanbul. These governors fought a losing battle for power with the other parts of the Algerian elite. By the mid-seventeenth century, they had lost all real authority, and an elected member of the Algerian elite became the de facto governor, albeit not sanctioned by the sultan. During the second half of the seventeenth century, the of govern the Ottoman Algeriansecurely. elite searched for an arrangement that would allowleaders them to their province The arrangement that was finally found involved the recognition by the sultan of the locally determined governor as legitimate (bestowing on him the title ‘pasha’) and the continuous demonstration of the province’s loyalty to the centre. This arrangement functioned well until the end of the eighteenth century. But even if the beginning of the nineteenth century was marked by the return of instability to the system, Ottoman Algeria’s elite dependency on the imperial centre did not alter until the French conquest in . NOTES Vatin : . The high number of Janissaries in the force sent to North Africa (,, accompanied by some , volunteers enjoying the same privileges as the ‘real’ Janissaries) indicates the importance of these new territories to the Ottomans. In comparison, in , the garrisons of Buda and
Pest, respectively which became principala: positions men (Veinstein ).in the anti-Habsburg front, numbered , and Toledano : –; Raymond : –. Shuval : –. Laroui : . Shuval a: . Imber : –; Veinstein a: . al-Jādirī, Muhammad b. Muhammad, ‘Al-zahra al-nā’ira fī mā jara fil-Jazā’ir hīn agharat ‘alayha junūd al-kafāra’, Bayern Staatsbibliothek (coda r. ): fol. . Hess : . Grammont : ; Gaïd : . Grammont : . Imber : –; Samih –: . Imber : . Süreyya : . Ibid.: . İnalcık : , ; Hess : .
Imber : . Bacqué-Grammont : . Hess : . Samih –: . Shuval b: . Ibid.: and n. . Boyer : . Toledano : –. Shuval : –, .
— The peripheralization of the Ottoman Algerian elite —
Raymond : . Fisher : –. Boyer a: . Fontenay : –. Mantran : . Delphin : . Boyer : . Boyer : , n. . Boyer : ; Boyer : . Boyer : .
Grammont ; Samih –: . Julien :: ; Gaïd : and n. . Grammont : . Boyer : . Barkey : . Ibid.: –. Ali Biçnin’s story, and especially his end, resembles that of Żāhir al-‘Umar, another local leader who became acting governor of a relatively large area in eighteenth-century Palestine; see Philipp : –. Shuval b: . Samih –: . Boyer a: –. The rule of the aghas continued until . Thereafter the real governor, a member of the Ottoman Algerian elite, had the title dayı (from the Turkish ‘maternal uncle’). Europeans have rendered this title dey. Raymond : , and, for other cases, , . Mantran : –. Cited in Samih –: .
Samih: :–. . Hess Hathaway : . Ibid. Shuval a. Delphin : –. Shuval a: –. Tassy : . Shaw : . Raymond : . Shuval c. Shuval a: –.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ON THE EDGES OF AN OTTOMAN WORLD Non-Muslim Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam
İsmail Hakkı Kadı
S
tate–society relations in the Ottoman empire have been an intriguing topic provoking the interest of several historians and social scientists. Earlier interpretations emphasized the centralist character of the Ottoman state and the lack of intermediate structures in a western sense, which bridged the gap between state and society. Recent studies have tended to concentrate on other elements indicating that the gap between the Ottoman state and society had never been as large as was supposed. In this vein, Michael Meeker emphasized the interpersonal relations between Ottoman statesmen in Istanbul and those elsewhere, as well as conscription to the army and religious education as instruments of imperial participation which reduced the gap between the imperial centre and people in the provinces.1 This chapter focuses on the Ottoman Armenian and Ottoman Greek merchant communities of Amsterdam from the early seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, showing how they operated ‘on the edges of an Ottoman world’. Here ‘the Ottoman world’ does not denote a geographical entity delineated by physical borders. Rather it relies on the assumption that the political, cultural, economic and other influences of the Ottoman empire must have extended far beyond the borders of the empire through various means, including the circulation of ideas, goods and diplomacy. Thus here the borders of the Ottoman world are not defined by the domination of the Ottoman military-administrative apparatus or by the political/ ideological influence of the Porte. Rather, the Ottoman empire, with its land, people, administrative machinery, etc., constitutes the core of a ‘world’ which encompasses a broader universe characterized, in our specific case, by the circulation both of Ottoman quantities sufficient to sustain the presence of a merchant community and ofgoods men in from the empire who had communal ties and intensive connections with people in the empire. The dependency of the merchants in Amsterdam on trade with the Ottoman empire was the crucial medium which ensured that their communities remained a part of this Ottoman world in a distant trade centre. In this respect, Meeker’s emphasis on conscription to the army and religious education is replaced by engagement with the trade of the goods of the empire with which certain non-Muslim Ottoman communities were also associated within the empire.
— Non-Muslim Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam — OTTOMANEUROPEAN TRADE: BACKGROUND
The earliest European trade partners of the Ottomans were the Italian states of Genoa and Venice, with whom they came into contact as early as the fourteenth century. European nations trading with the Ottomans were required to obtain a so-called capitulation (ahidname) delineating the provisions of their trade and privileges. The earliest Ottoman capitulation granted to the Genoese is dated to , with the Venetians obtaining theirs in subsequent decades. Despite intermittent references indicating English presence in the Levant in the mid-fifteenth century, it was only during the sixteenth century that western European nations obtained commercial privileges and began to take part officially in trade with the Ottomans. The Ottoman conquest of Egypt in resulted in Ottoman confirmation of the capitulations accorded by the Mamluks to the French, although the latter did not obtain trade privileges comparable to those of the Italians until . This was followed by the capitulations accorded to the English in .2 Sixteenth-century English trade with the Ottoman empire consisted mainly of the export eastwards of lead, tin and woollen cloth and the import into England of cotton, cotton yarn, carpets, gallnuts, currants, wine, olive oil and Iranian silk.3 The trade pattern in textiles applied also to the Ottoman empire’s other western European trade partners and continued down to the nineteenth century. They competed mainly in exporting finished cloth, especially woollens, and in the importation of textile raw materials such as cotton, silk and mohair yarn. In the late sixteenth century, Dutch ships and merchants are noted trading in the eastern Mediterranean under the English or French flags. They were able to trade independently in the Ottoman empire only after obtaining their own ahidname in . produced a phenomenal of Dutch commercial activities the Levant,This stimulated principally by theexpansion fact that, like the English, the Dutch paidin a low customs duty of per cent, whereas, until , the French continued to pay per cent.4 During the s the Dutch established control over the trade in Spanish wool and Turkish mohair and developed the relevant textile industries in the Netherlands.5 The availability of Spanish wool and its processing in Holland provided exportable goods to the Levant, while the demand of the Leiden textile industry for mohair yarn ensured that returns were marketable. It is clear that the intensification of the activities of the northern powers eclipsed that of France around the mid-seventeenth century, when the annual trade volume of France with the Levant was worth between and million livres, that of England about million livres, and that of the Dutch about million livres. 6 In , for which we have exact data, the position of France had been weakened due to the competition of the Dutch and English to such an extent that their imports from the Levant stood only at million livres, while the combined Dutch and English imports approached million livres annually.7 However, the efforts of Colbert, the French minister of finance from to , to promote French trade yielded clear results in the Levant after . Along with the reorganization of the relevant French institutions, extended privileges which the French obtained from the Porte paved the way for its commercial expansion in the eighteenth century.8 Meanwhile, the Nine Years’ War (–) caused a serious setback, particularly to the Dutch. Both the Dutch economy as a whole and its trade with the Levant were severely affected, resulting in a serious decline in Dutch trade in camlets, mohair
— İsmail Hakkı Kadı —
and other Levantine raw materials.9 Other western nations were also damaged by the same developments, but, it seems, less so than the Dutch Republic. 10 Prospects for the Dutch Levant trade remained low during and after the War of Spanish Succession (–). By then it had become clear that it was the competition of other western capitulatory nations, especially France, which cast a shadow over Dutch trade. The main problem of the Dutch in the Levant was their inability to compete with the export products – woollen textiles – of the English and the French, rather than a lack of demand for Levantine products in the Netherlands. In fact, by the s, despite the contraction of the Leiden and Haarlem textile industries during the previous war years, two-thirds of the , bales of mohair yarn exported annually Anatolia to Europe ended up to in , the Netherlands. However, it was mainly the from English who profited from the Dutch demand for Turkish mohair yarn, by exporting ‘londens’, a new cloth product which allegedly was an imitation, both in quality and colour, of the Dutch textiles, to the Levant in return for the mohair yarn which they then consigned to the Netherlands.11 Even more harmful for Dutch interests was the introduction of a new cloth by the French, for which they began to import considerable quantities of mohair yarn.12 Although there was an active trade flowing between the Ottoman empire and Europe in the early modern period, scholars of Ottoman–European commercial contacts consider the existence of Ottoman mercantile communities in the trade centres of western Europe to be exceptions rather than the rule in this era. This view probably srcinated in what are now outdated notions about Ottoman aversion to trade, and in the fact that the Ottoman administration promoted the settlement of European merchants in its ports and provided them with legal and fiscal privileges through the capitulations. Although some trade partners of the Ottomans such as the Venetians had to grant reciprocal rights to Ottoman subjects, the French, English and Dutch capitulations did not include such clauses.13 Further, historians’ perceptions of Ottoman–western European trade has been dominated by works focusing on the Levant trades of France and England, which has supported notions about the absence of Ottoman merchant colonies in western Europe, since these two nations barred foreign (including Ottoman) merchants from participating in this trade. English trade was organized as a monopoly of a chartered company, the English Levant Company, which was formed in by amalgamation of the London-based Turkey and Venice companies of English merchants. This was not a joint stock company, but one whose members traded independently under strict regulations, which excluded foreigners completely from membership by prescribing that this was confined to the ‘mere merchants’ of London who paid the entrance fee. 14 Although the Levant Company theoretically did not prohibit non-members from taking part in English trade with the Levant, traders. it did so15in practice by levying an additional per cent due on goods of non-member French regulations regarding Ottoman merchants participating in Ottoman– French trade were not much different. By the eighteenth century, a small group, the merchants of Marseilles, exercised a near-monopoly of French trade with the Levant, with the Chamber of Commerce of Marseilles ensur[ing] that Ottoman merchants – in the same way as other foreigners – were excluded from the Levant trade through all sorts of prohibitions, ranging from the
— Non-Muslim Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam —
right to export or import goods to and from France to that of settling on French territory.16 However, the situation was different with regard to Italian trade. Kafadar’s study of Ottoman merchants in Venice and Ancona, published in , shows that Ottoman merchants used to visit these places for trade as early as the first half of the fifteenth century, and that there was an Ottoman merchant community established in Venice, trading mainly in camlets (produced from mohair yarn), spices and leather in return for European textiles.17 He also showed that this community rose to prominence around 18
the century and survived wellwere intoprepared the eighteenth. weremid-sixteenth no prohibitions, Ottoman merchants to settle. Thus, where there OTTOMAN MERCHANT
COMMUNITIES
IN AMSTERDAM
The Dutch were the only nation among the major western European trade partners of the Ottoman empire who pursued free trade policies in the Levant, following the Venetian model.19 Although they also established an institution which dealt specifically with the issues of Dutch trade in the Levant, this was not a company with a monopoly, but rather a board of control and advice. The board comprised seven members, who held weekly meetings, discussed issues related to trade and navigation in the Mediterranean, and advised both merchants and authorities. The trade itself was carried out by individual merchants or companies who were not subjected to major 20
discriminative practices accordingthat to their citizenship. It is therefore not surprising Ottoman merchants seized the opportunity to trade with the Netherlands and to make their way there. The records of Amsterdam notaries indicate that there was a significant Armenian presence there in the seventeenth century. The earliest Armenians seem to have appeared in the city during the first and second decades of the seventeenth century. Although it is clear that these Armenians srcinated from Iran and had reached Amsterdam as a result of the silk trade,21 Ottoman Armenians arrived soon afterwards, and by the s their number probably matched that of the Iranian Armenians. However, it is difficult to assess the exact population of the Armenian colony and the number of Ottoman Armenians in it. We know that in at least sixty-six different Armenian merchants visited various notaries in Amsterdam on one or more occasions. 22 This figure could represent only a fraction of a generally self-sufficient community.23 Alternatively, if merchants were required to make use of the services of a notary, this figure could indicate more or less the total number of Armenian merchants in the city. 24 It is also likely that the tendency of Armenian merchants visit notaries overwhich time required as a resultthat of their integration into the business to environment of increased Amsterdam, they adjust their business practices accordingly. The same records indicate that Ottoman Armenians relied extensively on trade with their homeland and especially on that of mohair yarn, in which they were prominent, not to say dominant, within the Ottoman empire as well.25 In comparison with the Armenian colony, we know even less about the overall size and characteristics of the Ottoman Greek colony in Amsterdam, although there were
— İsmail Hakkı Kadı —
certain similarities. Like the Armenians, the Greeks owed their presence in Amsterdam to the trade of merchandise which srcinated from their home area. The Izmir region of western Anatolia was an important cotton-producing area and had a considerable Greek population. Consequently, during the eighteenth century, when cotton came to dominate the cargoes of Amsterdam-bound ships departing from Izmir, Greek merchants also began to appear in Amsterdam. The cargo lists of Dutch vessels on this route,26 as well as the relevant entries in the archives of the notaries of Amsterdam, reveal that, within the context of Ottoman–Dutch trade, the Greeks depended on the cotton trade just as much as the Armenian merchants depended on the mohair yarn trade. The general growth and decline of these merchant colonies closely parallels the growth and decline of the trade of the goods in which they specialized. Ottoman Armenians made their way to Amsterdam in the seventeenth century when mohair yarn constituted the most important merchandise imported by the Netherlands from the Ottoman empire. Correspondingly, their Amsterdam colony had begun to decline by the mid-eighteenth century, following the decline of the mohair trade. Similarly, the formation of the Ottoman Greek colony in Amsterdam accompanied the rise of the cotton trade to prominence around the mid-eighteenth century. The relative absence of Ottoman Jewish commercial activity may be attributed, among other factors, to the absence, within the context of Ottoman–Dutch trade, of a specific merchandise with which this community was associated. At this point we should also note that, throughout the period under investigation, the Ottoman merchant community of Amsterdam did not include a significant number of Muslim merchants. If Dutch free trade policies made Ottoman trading communities in Amsterdam possible, it was the Ottoman merchants’ individual entrepreneurship and communal solidarity that brought these communities into existence. In what follows, we focus on the career of two particular Ottoman merchants in order to illuminate certain specific characteristics of these communities and their position with regard to the ‘Ottoman world’. We will consider, first, the career of the Armenian Alexander di Masse, who was active in Amsterdam mainly during a period when the mohair yarn trade was declining and, second, the Greek cotton merchant Stati Thoma. Both men were trading in the second half of the eighteenth century. OTTOMAN MERCHANTS
BETWEEN
AM ST ER DA M AN D IZ MI R
Alexander di Masse was born around , probably in Ağrı, in eastern Anatolia. It appears that he arrived in Amsterdam before , became a citizen and died there in .27 He a member of the on Armenian Church and spoke both Armenian and Dutch. Thewas earliest information Di Masse’s commercial activities in Amsterdam relates to a consignment of thirty-eight bales of mohair yarn, which he received from Moses di Stephan and Massy Magakia in Izmir in . 28 As he seems to have been about thirteen years old at this time, we might assume that he operated as an apprentice of another Armenian merchant in Amsterdam. The overwhelming majority, if not all, of the mohair yarn that arrived in the city was destined for the camlet looms in Leiden. Di Masse probably had the option of delivering his goods directly to the textile
— Non-Muslim Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam —
producers in Leiden, of arranging a sale through brokers in Amsterdam, or of auctioning them at the exchange. As it appears that the latter alternative was the one mainly utilized by Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam, this probably applies to Di Masse as well. In addition to his trade in mohair yarn, he dealt in carpets and fruits, which he received from Izmir, and in other merchandise which he received from Venice.29 We are informed about this latter connection by means of a notarial act which mentions that Di Masse sold some Venetian pedlar’s wares in Amsterdam which belonged to Giochim and Fratelli di Marco in Venice.30 Although Venice seem to have functioned as a springboard for some of the (especially Greek) members of the Ottoman trading 31
community in Amsterdam, given the available information connections of numerous other merchants, it is difficult to state on thattheit careers played and a crucial role in the formation of the Ottoman trading community of Amsterdam. The fact that ships navigating between Ottoman ports and Amsterdam never visited Venice 32 indicates that this port did not play any significant role in Ottoman–Dutch trade in the eighteenth century. Due to the irregular character of the data on his commercial transactions, it is difficult to assess the significance of each trading commodity in Di Masse’s commercial activities. Nevertheless, the frequent appearance of mohair yarn in his transactions, during a period when the trade of this item to the Netherlands was declining, reveals the continuing importance to him of this commodity. Di Masse seems to have been an important competitor of Thomas de Vogel, a Dutch merchant trading with the Levant, who kept a close eye on Di Masse’s commercial activities and shared his observations with his own business correspondents in the Ottoman empire. De Vogel’s papers, now kept in the municipal archives of Amsterdam, are the only surviving records of an eighteenth-century Dutch merchant trading with the Levant. His observations show that the high point of Di Masse’s business affairs occurred in the mid-s and that he suffered a sudden collapse afterwards. The first sign in the sources that Di Masse faced rising difficulties is his failure in to honour certain bills of exchange drawn on him by Masse di Herabeth & Sons in Izmir. This firm, one of the main business partners of Alexander di Masse, was run by his brother Isaie di Masse, and also had commercial ties to a number of other cloth producers and merchants in Amsterdam.33 From the available sources it is difficult to assess the exact nature of the relationship between Alexander di Masse in Amsterdam and the firm in Izmir. One of the obvious options is that Alexander in Amsterdam acted as the agent of the family firm in Izmir. However, the fact that Alexander’s business transactions with Izmir were not limited to his transaction with the Masse firm, as well as the fact that the latter had commercial transactions with other traders in Amsterdam, suggests that Alexander and the Masse firm in Izmir had close business relations butinacted independently. It was common practice for each firm or individual merchant Amsterdam and Leiden, or in Izmir and Istanbul, to have various alternative business correspondents at other ports and to trade with more than one of these correspondents simultaneously. Thus Isaie di Masse could consign his mohair yarn to Alexander for sale while corresponding with cloth producers or merchants in Amsterdam to arrange other consignments of cloth in return. That the brothers operated in a shared, closely linked commercial world is shown by the fact that the financial crisis which affected Alexander di Masse had a much bigger impact on his brother in Izmir. When Alexander did not honour the
— İsmail Hakkı Kadı —
obligations drawn on him by Isaie, holders of bills of exchange in Amsterdam began to raise protests,34 and to return the bills to Isaie in Izmir for payment. As Isaie di Masse was himself unable to discharge these obligations, his European creditors asked the Dutch consul to intervene, as Isaie was a Dutch protégé.35 The ensuing investigations by the consul revealed that the commercial network of Isaie di Masse was quite wide, including forty-seven locals, among them Turks, Jews, Greeks, Armenians and seven Europeans. The brother of the dey of Algiers, from the Algerian community in Izmir, was among Isaie’s creditors, and he apparently owed money to the miri (imperial treasury).36 On account of Alexander’s financial crisis in Amsterdam and resulting pressures uponhimself Isaie in was Izmir, the latter’s goods were Ottoman customs officials, Isaie arrested temporarily, andsequestered the firm ofbyMasse di Herabeth went bankrupt. Meanwhile, the growing panic among his creditors and their accumulating demands must have reduced considerably Alexander di Masse’s net worth in Amsterdam. On August , De Vogel noted that the previous week Alexander had been seen at the Exchange for the last time, and had then retired.37 Two months later, De Vogel referred to Di Masse as a poor man who had lost all his belongings to pay a chain of bills of exchange and to meet his other obligations. Now his creditors visited him to demand he pay his outstanding debts.38 Alexander’s willingness to satisfy his creditors during his financial crisis might have ruined his finances at the time, but it apparently sustained his reputation as an honest merchant. This must have been very important for his further business career, and it is clear that he did not give up public life permanently. In , he appears in the sources as a benefactor with enough money to offer to pay the funeral expenses of Daniel Mgrieck, the Armenian priest in Amsterdam.39 In , a merchant from Izmir named Caspar di Carabeth travelled for a short time to Amsterdam and empowered the Volcker brothers there to act on his behalf to lay claim on Alexander di Masse.40 It is not clear whether this claim stemmed from Di Masse’s crisis in the s or came about through a more recent difference. What is clear is that, when he died in , Alexander di Masse was no longer a poor man. According to the notarial archives, his estate included, among other things, two houses in Amsterdam; furniture and diamonds worth , guilders; sundries and drugs worth , guilders; a considerable amount of debentures and coupons; , guilders in cash; and the huge amount of , guilders in outstanding debts owed him. This clearly represented considerable wealth.41 Unfortunately, the sources currently available do not allow us to see how Alexander had rebuilt his fortune. The only merchandise included in the inheritance were some dimits (cotton cloths srcinating in the Levant) and red cotton yarn,42 which indicate that he continued to trade with Izmir until his death. Alexander di had Masse was one of the last members of Amsterdam’s Armenian community, which become largely obsolete by the beginning of the nineteenth century. The close relationship between his own business career and that of his brother Isaie illustrates the extent to which Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam and those in Izmir operated in a shared universe. The fact that Alexander’s estate included cotton, not mohair, products suggests that he had transferred his trading network and experiences from mohair to cotton, which by then had replaced the former commodity as the main export item from the Levant to the Netherlands, and that he had been able to do this despite the dominance of Greek merchants in the cotton trade. His
— Non-Muslim Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam —
commercial activities thus remained dependent on the trade with Izmir. Such factors show that Di Masse’s emigration to the Netherlands and his adoption of Amsterdam citizenship are emblematic of his entrepreneurship, not of any estrangement from his home country. As the Ottoman Armenians’ commercial activities and presence in Amsterdam depended on the mohair trade, their numbers dwindled as this waned during the course of the eighteenth century. In their place, Greek merchants, who had arrived in Amsterdam much later than the Armenians, dominated the trade with Izmir. One of the more important Greek merchants in Amsterdam was Stati Thoma. He first appears in a contract,and recorded in the notarial archives in ,ship whereby Stati Thoma, Gio Mavrogordato Gio Anastasi chartered the Dutch for a de Vigilantie return voyage to Izmir and the Gulf of Patras. During the signing of the contract, Thoma was assisted by a translator, Stephano d’Isay, 43 which suggests that he was a newcomer at the time. Stati Thoma’s commercial moves were also closely observed by De Vogel, due especially to his successful consignments. De Vogel’s comments on Thoma’s commercial activities in Amsterdam are obvious testimonies of Greek dependence on the cotton trade srcinating from Izmir, as well as their dominance in this branch of trade. On a number of occasions De Vogel expressed his admiration for the quality of the cotton and cotton yarn, particularly the red yarn that Thoma received from Izmir.44 Because of his unparalleled success in the cotton yarn trade, Stati Thoma’s sales set the benchmark for this trade in Amsterdam.45 Such was his influence in this market that, whenever he decided to sell his goods by auction, prices immediately fell considerably, with the result that his competitors could not arrange profitable sales.46 This was because Thoma always received considerable amounts of yarn, even when he was not able to sell for high prices.47 Besides his cotton yarn trading, Thoma imported mohair yarn and dried fruits48 to Amsterdam and exported Dutch woollen textiles49 to Izmir. The mohair yarn trade also appears to have been an important field of activity for him. De Vogel reported occasionally to his business correspondents in Izmir about Thoma’s sales of mohair yarn, which also decreased the prices of this commodity in Amsterdam.50 He requested his correspondents in Izmir to send him the same quality mohair yarn they were consigning to Stati Thoma.51 Like Di Masse’s participation in the cotton trade, Thoma’s involvement in the mohair yarn trade reflects the application to one branch of trade of experience gained in another. Nevertheless, as already stated, the available documentation on the activities of both Armenian and Greek merchants, such as notarial deeds and cargo lists of the ships sailing between Izmir and Amsterdam, indicate that these two groups of merchants depended principally on the trade of the commodity in These which short they specialized. descriptions of the commercial activities of two Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam, one Armenian and one Greek, have been chosen primarily because their business careers in the city are much better documented than those of other merchants. However, there is no reason to think that their careers, especially with respect to their dependence on trade with the Ottoman empire and their connections back home, differed significantly from those of other merchants of Anatolian srcin in Amsterdam. Rather, the piecemeal information available concerning the activities of numerous other Armenian and Greek merchants confirms this pattern. This includes testaments
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which Ottoman merchants recorded at the notaries of Amsterdam. It is striking that almost all of these few testaments refer to estates or inheritors within the Ottoman empire. Stephano d’Isay, who had lived more than five decades in Amsterdam, willed, in his testaments in and , , guilders to each of his nephews – Paolo, George and Stefano d’Isay – and , guilders to his niece Catharina d’Isay, all of whom lived in Izmir.52 In this respect, Stephano d’Isay was certainly not an exception. His daughter Theresia d’Isay and her husband, Anastasio Tomasachi, still maintained two houses and a shop in Izmir when they recorded their own testaments at the notary in Amsterdam in . They had decided to leave these estates, along with , 53
guilders, Anastasio’s brother, Gio Tomasachi, who was then to resident Venice. An earliertoexample of such merchants bequeathing belongings familyinback home is the case of the Armenian merchant Avet di Jeremias, who had his will recorded in Amsterdam in . Jeremias left , guilders to the three children of his brother, Jeremias di Eliazar, in Istanbul. The four children of one of his sisters in Istanbul were to receive a total of , guilders between them, while two of his sisters, also living in Istanbul, were to receive golden ducats per year.54 Whether with regard to the estates or the relatives, the recurrence of Izmir and Istanbul in the testaments of Ottoman Armenian and Greek merchants in Amsterdam should be considered as further proof that there was a shared universe encompassing the Armenians and Greeks of Izmir and Istanbul and those of Amsterdam. DIPLOMACY AND TRADE
Towards the end of the eighteenth century the Ottoman trading world gained a clearer Ottoman aspect through diplomatic intervention by the Porte to protect the interests of Armenian and Greek merchants in Amsterdam against Dutch infringements. This was a rather surprising development in view of the lack of interest in the activities of its merchant subjects beyond the boundaries of the empire which had characterized the Ottoman polity during the preceding couple of centuries. Studies on Ottoman traders in Venice have shown that the Ottoman administration did protect its merchants trading there in the sixteenth century, probably because many of them were Muslim and living in the darülharb. As mentioned above, specific articles were included in the capitulations of this nation requiring reciprocal privileges for Ottoman merchants trading with Venice. However, the capitulations of France, England and the Netherlands did not include comparable articles implying reciprocity, nor did the Ottoman state intervene in the affairs of its merchant subjects or lend them its protection beyond arranging the restitution of Ottoman merchants’ goods captured by European pirates.55 Therefore, the use of Ottoman diplomacy for the protection of Ottoman merchants late eighteenth-century Amsterdam came toofthethesurprise of the Dutch authorities.inUnder dispute was the status and allegiance Ottoman merchant community. The Ottoman intervention happened against the background of the Napoleonic Wars, when the Dutch authorities imposed new taxes to match growing expenses. As the Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam, by now predominantly Greek, were also expected to pay these taxes, they requested the Porte to intervene. It did so readily, with a memorandum to the Dutch embassy in Istanbul, which started with a list of individuals56 and firms who were described as the sultan’s genuine subjects and
— Non-Muslim Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam —
merchants in Amsterdam. The memorandum then requested the exemption of these Ottoman subjects from such taxes, just as Dutch subjects residing in the Ottoman domains were similarly exempt. Otherwise, the Porte would consider Dutch subjects in its domains liable to all taxes paid by its own subjects. 57 The Dutch counter-argument was that the Greeks in Holland were neither travellers nor foreigners, but proper Dutch citizens who had bought this status and taken the oath of citizenship by promising to comply with the laws of the Republic. The capitulations were therefore not relevant.58 In November the Porte sent another memorandum to the Dutch ambassador in Istanbul which was signed by the chief dragoman Constantin Ypsilanti, who himself Greek. outright intervention of the Greek members of the Ottoman was bureaucracy in the The interests of their compatriots in Amsterdam suggests that the Greek merchants in Amsterdam must have utilized their personal contacts to mobilize the Ottoman government. It is otherwise impossible to imagine that a petition of a group of Greek merchants in Amsterdam could reach the highest echelons of the Ottoman government and cause it to intervene repeatedly and insistently. Ypsilanti’s memorandum declared that the Greek merchants in Holland, especially those mentioned in the memorandum, were Ottoman subjects who were there only to do business and had no intention of settling. This was declared by their families and also proved by the fact that the latter were still residing in Ottoman dominions.59 Despite the indifference of the Ottoman administration during preceding periods, it is unlikely that the Ottoman merchants had, in fact, broken their connections with the Ottoman empire during this period of indifference, only to rediscover them later. The fact that, before the s, connections between the Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam and the higher echelons of the Porte did not surface explicitly and frequently should not be interpreted as a testimony of their absence. Rather, Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam seem to have maintained various connections with their compatriots who held prominent positions at the Porte, just as they maintained relations with their business correspondents in Izmir. This became obvious when Nicolas Marcella, a Greek merchant in Amsterdam, was subsequently appointed as the first Ottoman consul (şehbender) to the Netherlands. In , before the issue of local taxes on Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam was settled, the news of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt arrived in Istanbul. This had consequences for Ottoman–Dutch relations because the Netherlands had been an ally of France since its invasion by French armies in . Therefore, the diplomatic reprisal of the Porte for the invasion of Egypt was also directed at the Dutch presence in the empire.60 The Dutch ambassador was exiled to Bucharest, and Dutch merchants were obliged to seek the protection of other European ambassadors at the Porte. In , after diplomatic contact was resumed, the Ottoman Greek merchants 61 in Amsterdam again refused to pay municipal taxes, their arguments on Ypsilanti’s memorandum. Ottoman attempts to assistbasing the merchants then led to the appointment in of Marcella as the first şehbender.62 Marcella’s instructions were to liaise with the Dutch authorities and to lend protection and assistance to Muslim and nonMuslim Ottoman merchants, visitors, captains, crewmen and other Ottoman subjects who visited Dutch ports. He was authorized to appoint deputies to different Dutch ports to ensure that the subjects of the sultan who arrived at such places were protected and assisted properly, and that they could enjoy their lawful privileges.63 In effect, as stated in a letter from the grand vezir, Marcella was appointed Ottoman consul, with
— İsmail Hakkı Kadı —
the expectation that the Dutch authorities would treat him like the consuls of other nations and to help him to carry out his mission.64 It is worthy of note that Marcella, who until this point appears to have been merely an ordinary Ottoman merchant in Amsterdam, apparently had the required connections to convince the Porte of his loyalty and capability so as effectuate his appointment as consul. The frequent and personal intervention of the Porte’s dragomans in the interest of these merchants might seem at first glance an ordinary bureaucratic process, but the ease of access which the merchants had to the Porte and their ability to secure the appointment of one of their number as consul suggests that it was more than that.worked Marcella born in Izmirsome and time livedinforthe a while He apparently as was an interpreter andinspent serviceinofPatmos. Prince Nikolaos Petrou Mavrogenis, who later became prince of Wallachia (–). 65 It was probably this acquaintance which brought Marcella into contact with the Porte’s dragoman circles. Marcella later went to Austria, and subsequently to Amsterdam. One of his brothers, Petro, was a merchant in Izmir, while another, Stephanos (Etienne), became the intendant of the prince of Moldavia. In Marcella married Susanna d’Isay, the daughter of Stephano d’Isay, by then one of the most important Greek merchants in Amsterdam, and his Dutch wife, Geeretruida van Houten. In Amsterdam, Marcella traded in association with George Tomasachi and transacted with his brother Petro in Izmir.66 His partnership with Tomasachi continued up to his death in .67 Scattered information on their commercial activities shows that they traded with Izmir in raw cotton, dried figs and raisins, mohair and cotton yarn, and some other minor goods.68 This brief account of Marcella shows both that he was very well rooted in the Greek community of Amsterdam and that, at the same time, he appears to have had the connections at the Porte necessary to bring about his appointment as Ottoman consul. These connections added a different dimension to the commercial universe which encompassed the Ottoman Greeks and Armenians of Amsterdam and their business partners in the Ottoman empire. The careers of Ottoman merchants such as Alexander di Masse and Stati Thoma demonstrate the circulation of a considerable quantity of Ottoman goods and the presence of merchant communities whose members held strong business, family and communal ties with their compatriots back home. The request of the Greek merchants in Amsterdam for Ottoman intervention in relation to the tax impositions threatened in the city, and especially Marcella’s appointment as the Ottoman consul, then resulted in the presence of the Ottoman polity as an additional component of this universe, both within the Ottoman empire and in Amsterdam. NOTES
Meeker . . I.nalcık : –, . Inalcık : –. Paris : . Israel : . Tongas : –. Masson : . The most important of these privileges were the reduction of the customs duties to per cent in and the extension of this privilege to Egypt in ; see Paris : –.
— Non-Muslim Ottoman merchants in Amsterdam — Israel : , . This is clear from comparison of the volume of English and Dutch textile exports. According to the Dutch consul in Izmir, Dutch textile exports to Izmir and Istanbul comprised about , half pieces in the s, increasing to about , half pieces by the beginning of the Nine Years’ War in (Heeringa : ). In it was estimated that the annual quantity of Dutch textile exports to the whole Levant remained at , to , pieces, whereas the English exported about , pieces annually (ibid.: ; see also Ülker : ). Heeringa : –. Ibid.: –. Pedani : .
This fee: was £ for–; those under years of age and £ for older participants. Wood –, Davistwenty-seven : , –. Eldem : . Kafadar . See also Pedani ; Faroqhi . De Groot : . Ibid.: –. De Roever : ; Van Rooy : . Bekius forthcoming; Bekius and Ultee : . A number of notarial acts published by Van Rooy () on Armenian merchant habits could be interpreted as indicating that a significant proportion of merchants carried out their business without ever visiting the notary. According to Bekius and Ultee (: ), the number of Armenian merchants using the notaries of Amsterdam can be considered the total number of these merchants. On Armenian prominence in the mohair yarn trade within the Ottoman empire, see Masters : ; Sahilliog˘lu : ; Bosscha-Erdbrink : . For examples of cargo lists of Dutch ships sailing between Izmir and Amsterdam, see Nanninga : –; : –; Dutch National. Archives (henceforth NA) .. [Archives of theNanninga Dutch Embassy in Istanbul, –]: Amsterdam City Archives (henceforth GA) [Armenians of Amsterdam: card index prepared by S. Van Rooy]: , Alexander di Masse. GA [Archives of the Notaries]: /. GA : /, /. GA : /. See the case of Curmulli in Van den Boogert : . See Nanninga : –; Nanninga : –. GA : /, /, /, /, /, /; GA [Archives of the Vogel family and related families]: /. GA : /, /. On the protection system, see Van den Boogert : –. Ottoman subjects acquired the status of protégé of a European embassy or consulate by obtaining a berat (imperial diploma) from the Porte declaring that they were serving the embassy or consulate as a dragoman or servant, etc. Nanninga : –.
GA : /. GA : /. GA : /. GA : /. Van Dillen : . GA : /. GA : /. Nanninga : , ; GA : /, /, /. GA : /.
— İsmail Hakkı Kadı —
Nanninga : –, ; GA : /. Ibid.: . Ibid.: ; GA : /; GA : /. GA : /. GA : /, /, /. GA : /. GA : /; : /. GA : /. GA : /. On Ottoman intervention for the restitution of goods captured by pirates, see Van den Boogert . This included the names of the following individuals and firms: Yanni Mavrogordato, Yorghi Pitcipio et Ce, Dimitrio Schilizi et Ce, Tomazachi et Ce, Freres Schilizi et Ce, Freres Marcella, and Michail Paterachi. Nanninga : –. Ibid. NA .. [Archives of the Department of Foreign Affairs, –]: . Nanninga : . The group opposed to paying municipal taxes comprised: N. Marcella, G. Picipio, S. Schillizzi, Anton Curtovich, Dem. Schillizzi, Nic. Argenti, W. Paterachie, Steph. d’Isay and A. Tomasachi. Nanninga : . Leiden University Library, Cod. Or. . NA ..: . Sfyroeras : –. Marcella : n.; Schutte : . GA : .
Nanninga : , –.
PART IV
ORDINARY PEOPLE
CHAPTER TWENTY
MASTE RS, SERV ANTS AN D SLAVE S Household formation among the urban notables of early Ottoman Aleppo
Charles L. Wilkins
S
tudents of Ottoman history have long recognized the household as one of the building blocks of Ottoman society and politics. In the last few decades important contributions have been made to the scholarly understanding of the varying structures, operations and functions of elite households. Many historians have been interested in the devolution of power from the middle of the sixteenth century onwards, when high state officials and other grandees built large household organizations to undertake responsibilities that once had belonged exclusively to the central government.1 Underlying these studies is the basic argument that the patrimonial household organizations of the larger political elite provided the necessary administrative agency for perpetuating dynastic state authority just when the political institutions of the central imperial state were faced with serious challenges. 2 How households among the common, subject populations shaped, and were shaped by, changing political and social conditions presents a challenging but no less important question. The relationship of the household (who one lives with) to the family (who one is related to) is of central importance. The starting assumption is that the households of the elite service class (the ‘askeri) combined kinship-based family units with servants, slaves and clients, while households of the subject population (the re‘aya) were family units defined by kinship relations alone. Complicating this picture, however, is the emerging scholarly view that there was considerable internal variation in the make-up of both elite and subject households, as well as the established fact that the boundary between elite and subject populations was constantly contested and shifting.3 to this viewand are studies havetodrawn on the theories and methods of Contributing sociology, anthropology gender that studies challenge essentialist assumptions of the ‘traditional’ Middle Eastern family in the early modern and modern periods. Such works trace generational cycles of change in household structure, chart regional and cultural variations, point to the environmental factors affecting family formation, and shed light on the constructed nature of ‘family’ itself.4 The pioneering study of Margaret Meriwether on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Aleppo, a major Ottoman trading and administrative city in the north of geographical Syria, focuses on the family dynamics of a distinct but composite social group, the urban notables, ordinar
— Charles L. Wilkins —
ily termed the a‘yan. Made up of locally assigned military-administrative cadres, the ulama and merchants, the urban notables were active in various configurations in cities throughout the empire and were distinguished mostly by their role as political mediators between the central state authorities and the local subject populations. 5 While Meriwether’s work is primarily one of family history, the fact that the object of her study is the dominant urban class means that her conclusions about family practices relate as much to elite political strategies as they do to the social habits and customs of the general population.6 The urban notables thus straddled the boundaries between rulers and ruled and as such engaged in practices reflective of both social segments. Focused on Aleppo the seventeenth century, the present essay offers a contribution to the study of urbaninnotable households as a demographically significant and influential stratum of Ottoman society. While the urban notables are most closely associated with the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when they asserted unprecedented political influence vis-à-vis the central government, one can also find in early centuries urban notable groups defined by high social status, wealth, and some measure of political influence. A soldier, civilian official, scholar or merchant – all members of the urban notable elite – might go about building a household in any number of ways, but the three principal strategies were marriage, the establishment of patron–client (intisab) ties, and the acquisition of slaves and servants – all of which were overlapping and interrelated. 7 Marriage was contracted for a variety of purposes: elite men might marry women of similar status to cement alliances between families, or they might marry beneath their status, apparently with the expectation that the wife acquiesce in practices such as polygamy and concubinage.8 No less important were intisab ties, especially as a multiplier of human resources for the household.9 Depending on his social and professional position, an Ottoman soldier or bureaucrat might patronize individuals whom he could place strategically in offices for the advancement of household interests, or enter into a relationship of clientage with a more powerful official and link his fortunes to the same. This chapter concentrates on the third strategy of household formation, the acquisition and employment of servants and slaves, with some attention given to the overlapping category of patron–client ties.10 By doing so, it seeks to discern the ways in which elite households organized human resources on a medium to large scale, in efforts to preserve their material assets and project their influence. It considers both free-born Muslims and slaves/freedmen, on the proposition that household heads employed the two groups in similar ways and downplayed the legal and social distinctions between them. Indeed, the institution of Islamic slavery, in both legal theory and social practice, promoted the integration and mobility of slaves in Muslim society. Identifying an array of pre-Islamic and Islamic traditions, recent attempt placethe Islamic slavery in a comparative framework argues that theone household was nottoonly primary but also the necessary agent of the socialization of slaves in Muslim societies.11 Forming the main sources for this study are the local law court records (sijillat almahakim al-shar‘iyya), which were maintained by Ottoman judges (qadis) in all cities and towns across the empire; the law court records of Aleppo are presently preserved in the National Archives of Syria. 12 The law court records of Aleppo were the recourse primarily of propertied persons, which means that court records reflect their interests and less those of the lower classes.13 These records should also be seen as embedded
— Masters, servants and slaves —
in local society and therefore a site of conflict and accommodation between Islamic law, imperial decree and local custom, mediated by local political and social interests; in fact, it is more accurate to call these law courts ‘Ottoman’, in accordance with the nature of the multi-ethnic Ottoman state, than ‘Islamic’.14 Unless otherwise stated, the court records used in this analysis date from the period to . HOUSEHOLDS AND SERVANTS
Free-born persons working as servants were found in large numbers in both commercial establishments and households. In craft and trade guilds (asnaf),15 the key element in the relationship between master and apprentice was a constrained reciprocity founded on the Islamic legal concept of labour rental ( isti’jar): the apprentice provided reliable labour, and in return the master provided compensation in the form of cash, goods, room and board, training, or a combination of these. 16 The reciprocity was constrained because, although the master (ustad, mu‘allim) directly hired his apprentices (sing. ajir, sani‘), the guild created lateral and other professional ties that tempered this hierarchical relationship. For example, in the silver embroiderers’ guild (sirmakashiyya) chose one of their members to train all the apprentices in the craft, in effect limiting the dependence of the apprentice on his srcinal master. 17 Sometimes the qadi also intervened to protect what he saw as the rights of the apprentice. In the court ordered a reluctant barber (hallaq) to train his apprentice, since, according to the qadi, the barber had srcinally hired him with the acknowledgment that he would train the apprentice in exchange for the apprentice’s service. 18 In the household, the relationship between master and servant was also based on reciprocity, but the range of moral and material goods being exchanged was greater, and the social groups involved were more diverse. Most importantly, though, constraints acting on the hierarchy of the master–servant relationship were fewer. Servants in a household ranged from anonymous day labourers, who were hired on a short-term basis, to domestic servants, who lived with the family most of their lives and enjoyed social intimacy with its members. In elite households, which varied greatly in size, free-born persons serving the household head and his family members could include an array of functionaries, among them servants with specialized duties, literate cadres such as scribes and prayer leaders (imams), and soldiers. These functionaries ordinarily entered the household through the relationship of intisab (literally, ‘affiliation’), secured initially with a pledge of loyalty ( bay‘a).19 The exchange that seems to have reinforced this relationship from day to day was what Roy Mottahedeh calls ‘gratitude for benefit’, in which the household head bestowed salary, material allowances, housing, patronage and other benefits at his disposal, and the servant showed his ‘gratitude’ 20
through hisentered loyalty to andmediate the faithful discharge ofso histhat duties, whateverthe theymaster’s were. proNo third party this relationship, theoretically tection and support was more comprehensive, and the obedience of the servant more absolute. The social norms governing the relationship between the household head and his free servants are difficult to recover given the often oral basis of these understandings and the discretionary nature of household ties. At least in some cases, the labour rental (isti’jar) does seem to have served as the legal framework, or at least as the starting point, for some relationships. Labour rental agreements that provide specific services,
— Charles L. Wilkins —
and in which persons could hire out their labour to more than one employer at a time, were commonly struck and governed a wide array of kinds of human labour, including those in trade and craft associations named above. There were, on the other hand, labour rental agreements that appear to secure the full and exclusive use of a person’s labour, thereby suggesting the circumstances of a patrimonial household.21 Although dating exclusively from the mid-sixteenth century, these documents of ‘self-rental’ (al-ijara bi’l-nafs) emerge as a flexible legal mechanism for recruiting household labour. In the handful of self-rental documents that survive from the fragmentary record of the early Ottoman period, young men from other parts of the empire – Albania and the Anatolian residents cities of Ankara, Kayseri hirecommonly themselvesthree out to individual of Aleppo for a and fixedAyntab period –ofagreed time, to most years, with some variation in the kind and amount of compensation. The recruitment by Aleppans of non-Aleppans, furthermore, would be a sound household-building strategy, since recent migrants typically would have neither any competing loyalties in local society nor any stable source of outside income giving them independence from the household head. To offer a specific example of self-rental, in a certain Haydar b. Sulayman, an Albanian Muslim, hired himself out (ajara nafsahu) to a Muslim resident of Aleppo, Qaraman b. Dawud, for a period of three years, on terms that he be paid qibrisis annually, and in addition, that his master keep him clothed with a shirtqamis ( ), pants (sarawil), coat (qunbaz) and turban (‘imama).22 The fact that Haydar was a young man and a transient stranger in Aleppo, that he hired himself out with no restriction except with respect to time, and that the employer provided him with clothes points to his impending attachment to a patrimonial household. The fairly elaborate provision of clothes – important markers of status in the Ottoman world – tied the servant Haydar to the household head, making him ‘his’ man and a projection of the household’s prestige and influence. It should be noted that, while self-rental contracts like that of Haydar are theoretically voluntary agreements, it seems likely that there may have been circumstances in which the household head exercised considerable leverage, such as if the would-be servant needed protection from creditors, personal enemies or slavers.23 In reviewing the self-rental agreements, one might observe that the law court, at least in the sixteenth century, appears to exert some degree of regulation over contractual ties between the two parties when they were defined by the exchange of material goods. Such a legal framework may have given some measure of assurance to masters and servants as they first entered into that relationship, but, as trust grew between them, court regulation was needed less and less. More broadly, if the available sources are any guide, the disappearance of self-rental agreements by the seventeenth century may point either to some unilateral contraction of the court’s authority to oversee household or to the of urban households, of great elitelabour households, to assertion regulate their ownnotable affairs more fully. following the lead Relations of service, especially after material obligations such as self-rental are fulfilled, should not necessarily be seen as durable and long term. It appears that, with respect to ties of clientage, the parties could dissolve those ties frequently. Writing towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Ottoman historian and man of letters Mustafa Ali (–) complained of state functionaries who frequently changed their allegiance from one high state official to another in the pursuit of selfadvancement.24 The law court of seventeenth-century Aleppo did not recognize intisab
— Masters, servants and slaves —
relations as such, but the court records do shed light on the procedures by which such relations were dissolved. While there is no generic term for the master, since he is usually described by his official position, the sources typically refer to the free-born servant as khadim.25 The small number of cases found suggest that high state officials frequently employed free-born servants to administer the rural districts around Aleppo, especially to carry out security and law enforcement duties as the subaşı, who might be likened to the chief of police in the area, or as one of his deputies. Servants ( khadim) also appear in the records as members of soldiers’ retinues and as such are distinguished from the soldiers’ slaves (‘abd or mamluk).26 These positions clearly comprise only a part of the range that servants providecultivated to elite households. Perhaps typicalofofduties a long-term relationship by provincial officials intisabcould was that between a one-time chief finance officer (defterdar) of Aleppo, Hajj Mehmed Efendi, and his servant (khadim) Zu’l-Fikar Bey b. Kaya ‘Ali. In an ibra’ (release of claims) action in , these two individuals settled all accounts after a period of twenty years, in which Mehmed Efendi had his servant Zu’l-Fikar Bey serve as subaşı for the village of Abin and collect its revenues.27 As an indicator of the absence of any distinction between servants and freedmen made by the court, on the same day Hajj Mehmed Efendi also released all claims on his freedman (mu‘taq) Yusuf b. ‘Abdullah, of Georgian srcin, whom he had manumitted and who had then served him ‘a long time’ as collector of the non-Muslim poll tax. 28 The language of these documents is essentially the same. Other documents go beyond the financial aspects of the intisab relationship to touch on the commitments which bound together master and servant, or patron and client. In , a young convert to Islam srcinally from Diyarbakr, Hasan b. ‘Abdullah, testified in court that he was a servant (khadim) to Isma‘il Agha, one of the Janissary officers of a one-time governor of Aleppo, but that Isma‘il Agha had travelled to Cairo, leaving him with the imam of a residential quarter in Aleppo until he could return. The imam, who held various administrative responsibilities in the quarter, appears to have been deputized by the officer to maintain his servants in the city and was himself probably a client of the officer. Hasan declared before the court that he no longer desired to be in the service ( khidma) of Isma‘il Agha and, having renounced any claim against the imam, requested to go ‘wherever he wanted’. After the imam verified the testimony, the qadi apparently released the former servant.29 Significantly, the concern of the qadi was not whether Hasan was meeting the obligations of his relationship with his master Isma‘il Agha – he was in effect unilaterally breaching an intisab agreement – but rather whether there were outstanding material claims between Hasan and the imam. Thus the court also seems to have mediated the termination of the clientage relationship, but only indirectly, and when those relations produced material obligations resulting from loans and other financial transactions. That courtexception records make no explicit mention of clientage as such suggests that, with the the possible of self-rental, commitments were made informally or within the household sphere, which had its own independent traditions of obligation and accountability. A second court document is comparable in significance. In the same year, , a European (Ifranji) from Crete named Giovanni, son of Giorgio, acknowledged in court that he was the servant (khadim) of an Ottoman sea captain, Veli Kapudan b. ‘Abdullah. Perhaps a Venetian captured in the continuing Ottoman military campaign in Crete, Giovanni now expressed the desire to leave the service of Veli Kapudan
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and declared his intent to remain Christian. Veli Kapudan was present in court and verified Giovanni’s statements, and a document recording the event was prepared for Giovanni to carry on his person from that time on. 30 The qadi in this case was not interested in regulating any formal contractual tie that might have existed between the two individuals.31 Rather, it seems, he had two other purposes in mind. Since Giovanni was now without a patron or affiliation, the qadi recognized the need to fix his personal status so that he would not be enslaved or seized as a fugitive slave. Just as important, he probably also wanted to ensure that Giovanni was given ample opportunity to consider conversion to Islam. We might compare the preoccupation qadi of theby in this instance to theslaves, attitude of is thealso Aleppo law court the purchase Christians of Christian which documented in towards court records. In such cases, prior to concluding the sale, the qadi ordinarily reminded the slave that he could convert to Islam and thereby avoid bondage under Christian masters, since by law Christians could not own Muslim slaves. Integration into a Christian household, so reasoned the qadi in these cases, would limit the interaction of the slave with the Muslim community, denying him increased opportunities to consider the perceived benefits of conversion.32 Correspondingly, the passage of the Christian Giovanni from membership in a Muslim household to an unaffiliated status represented for the qadi a lost opportunity to bring an errant soul into the Muslim fold. Here the court implicitly recognized service in the household of an Ottoman official as a socializing and assimilating process beneficial to the Muslim community. The case of Giovanni suggests that one way the court authorities shaped intisab relationships, though indirectly, was to promote master–client relations as an instrument of conversion when the servant was non-Muslim. In certain situations, court authorities also recognized the relationship between master and servant by including the servant in assessments of household economy. Akin to alimony and child support assignments (nafaqa), these assessments took place when the court imposed on an absent man, usually a travelling merchant or soldier on campaign, the costs of maintaining his household. What seems to have guided the court in determining the daily cost of the household was the style of life to which principal family members had become accustomed. Hence, in the court in Aleppo imposed on the absent ‘pride of merchants’ Hajj Yusuf Çelebi b. Hajj Salah al-Din al-‘Arifi a substantial allowance of ghursh asadi per day.33 This was to meet the daily needs of his wife, Khadija bt. Ahmad Efendi al-Zuhrawi, her two minor children, Sayyid Muhammad Salih and Tayyiba, a female slave ( jariya) who cared for the children, a second female slave who attended Khadija, and a male servant ( khadim) who supplied the household with items from the market.34 We suspect, however, that obtaining an allowance for servants was not automatic: women from influential fami35 in this regard. Khadija was herself from liesinfluential probably enjoyed a higher of success an Shiite family, therate Zuhrawis. The obverse side of the servant’s benefit from membership in the household was his share in its legal liability. The servant’s liability arose in cases where the household head and his dependants had been sued for an indemnity for bodily injury (diya). In one case from , members of a peasant family sued a soldier, Mehmed Beşe b. Ca‘fer Kuloğlu, for compensation after their son had drowned while providing service – milling flour – for the soldier’s retinue. After an apparent settlement between the two parties, the peasant family released all claims not only to the soldier, but also to his
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companion (rafiq) Mustafa Beşe b. Ahmad, and his servant (khadim) Khalifa b. Salah al-Din.36 In a second case from , a man sued members of the English merchant community and their servants (khadam) for reparation after he had been injured by a stray bullet while working in a suburban Aleppo garden; it seems that members of the community were close by when the incident took place. 37 No cases appear, however, in which the household head is held responsible for and pays an indemnity for an action committed by a free-born servant of his. The legal parameters of the household in these matters remain unclear. So far this analysis has focused on the ways in which households recruited and retained servants whocourt weredeemed adults. the Another strategy of minor specifically when the natural parentswas tooadoption poor to raise them,children, or when the children were orphans. While it has been shown that the taking in of orphans was common in Islamic societies, little evidence has emerged on the circumstances in which adoption was practised.38 In a series of three transactions dating from , a woman claimed that she was indigent and unable to raise her two minor sons; she then handed one son over to a high-status teacher (mudarris), who was the son of a district official (bek), and the other to a soldier, so that each would raise and provide for one son (li-yurabbihi wa yasunahu tahta tarbiyatihi). The qadi protected the interests of the children by requiring the teacher and soldier to spend a minimum amount on their sustenance and clothing (the nafaqa maintenance mentioned above). Significantly, these actions were carried out in the presence of the boys’ paternal uncle, who ordinarily would have served as a safety net for them and their mother; that he possessed the title of hajj suggests that he was a man of some means. 39 Lack of additional information on these cases prevents the drawing of any firm conclusions, but it may be that the adoption of these boys into these elite households was seen by the mother and her brother-in-law as a strategy of social mobility, whereby they would receive professional training and be appropriately socialized. A second case is very similar in structure and terminology but expressly adds as a purpose of such action not only childraising (tarabbi) but also adoption (tabanni).40 By his own account the seventeenth-century Armenian traveller Eremya Çelebi had been adopted with his parents’ consent by an influential Armenian and raised and educated by him.41 These cases resemble Ottoman practices of the nineteenth century, when, according to Ehud Toledano, households would take in girls, and sometimes also boys, from poor families within their patronage orbit, bring them up within the households, use their labour in return for food and shelter, train them according to need and talent, and later marry them off and set them up in life . . ., thereby expanding patronage 42
networks. Based on the preceding examples from Aleppo, one wonders to what extent families of greater means may have also placed their children in families of elite status to secure their futures. Toledano describes this practice as a ‘substitute arrangement’ as the slave trade contracted and slaves were less available. In these and other cases, the law court may have tacitly sanctioned what were ‘strategic’ adoptions to advance the interests of urban notable households.
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Figure . The Nur-al-Din room, from an upper-class house in Damascus, c..
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
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HOUSEHOLDS AND SLAVES
Slavery in the Ottoman empire has long been characterized by a striking diversity, encompassing both an involuntary recruitment system run by the imperial state (the devşirme), through which enslaved persons could rise to become military and administrative cadres, and an older Islamic legal and social regime that condoned and regulated chattel bondage.43 The present study aims to be inclusive in its definition and, following Toledano,44 places all major categories along a single continuum according to the degree of bondage:
military-administrative, or kul, slavery, in which young, enslaved male persons were trained and rose within the state apparatus as servants and property of the sultan; harem slavery, in which in a course parallel to kul slaves, young, enslaved female persons came to serve in the households of political elites as concubines or wives; domestic slavery, in which enslaved male and female persons served in non-state elite urban households in a variety of functions and were defined and governed as chattel by classical Islamic law, not the imperial law of kul slavery; and large-scale institutional slavery, ranging from agricultural slavery, in which enslaved persons were usually employed on extensive agricultural estates established by the government or political elites, to galley slavery, where slaves mixed with convicted criminals to power the vessels of the Ottoman navy.
In all these forms, slavery can be defined as a kind of patronage, ‘an involuntary relationship of mutual between quite unequal partners’. master can exercise force, but ifdependence the relationship is totwo function he ultimately mustThe come to terms 45 with the enslaved person on the basis of a constrained reciprocity. Given their intermediate social and political position, the urban notable households of Aleppo – the focus of this study – were home to some combination of kul, harem and domestic slaves (groups , and ). In contrast with free-born household servants, the status of household slaves as property ironically makes them easier to identify and study; the Ottoman law court, on which this study is based, was de facto an institution used primarily to protect propertied interests. Supplemented with other materials, court records can shed light on, among other topics, aspects of the slave trade, the demography of the slave population, patterns in the composition of the slave-holding population, and avenues of integration slaves could follow into urban notable households. Far from being a static institution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, slavery seems to have spread among the urban notable households as soldiers settled and became integrated in Aleppan society, because the soldiers’ household-building strategies, which drew heavily on the acquisition of slaves and servants, were replicated by a wider segment of non-military social elites. The demand for slave labour in the urban notable households of Aleppo and other Ottoman cities was sufficient to sustain a lucrative and substantial trade. The trade drew primarily on slaves taken during officially sanctioned raiding along the territorial peripheries of the empire, especially the Caucasus, the Black Sea basin and the Nile valley, but also illegal abduction and enslavement of various populations within the
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empire.46 The court records in Aleppo contain cases in which free-born adult Muslims had been enslaved and were later released by appeal to a qadi.47 The court also grappled with the kidnapping of local children for slavery, though it is difficult to say how widespread this activity was. Persons belonging to the local Druze community, an offshoot of Isma‘ili Shiism viewed as heterodox if not heretical by Sunni Muslims, seem to have been particularly vulnerable to kidnapping.48 Though strictly speaking not slavery, coerced labour could be extracted in situations of financial dependence. In , a woman living in Aleppo came to court and acknowledged that she owed a debt to a Janissary, who in turn acknowledged that he was requiring her adolescent son work him until she made full he repayment. If the woman were to remove her son to from hisfor service, the soldier added, would immediately demand repayment of 49 the full sum. This arrangement points to a form of debt bondage, especially in an economy in which soldiers were major moneylenders.50 The size and make-up of the urban slave population in seventeenth-century Aleppo offer clues to the kind and volume of productive labour they could generate for urban notable households. In a city of , people, enslaved persons probably numbered between , and ,. Though small in relative terms to other slave-holding societies, this slave population nevertheless came from diverse and distant regions. A survey of the sales and manumissions found in law court records between and reinforces the finding observed elsewhere that the Ottoman slave population was predominantly male – on average per cent throughout that period.51 The labour force in Aleppo, both free and enslaved, may have had a larger proportion of males than other cities because the city served as a staging point for caravans between Anatolia and the Arab lands and because it was a strategic logistical centre for military campaigns.52 From a long-term historical perspective, however, male predominance gave way to female predominance, as Ottoman armies and their vassals in the eighteenth century lost the offensive along their frontiers with European states and ceased to enslave on the scale commensurate with territorial expansion.53 The urban notable households of Aleppo were also home to a distinctive mix of slave ethnicities, with Russians and Georgians predominating in both sexes throughout much of the seventeenth century. A court record survey indicates that Georgians and Russians together accounted for an average of per cent of the total slave population, Georgians comprising per cent and Russians per cent. Persons of Ethiopian, Nubian, Hungarian and Circassian ethnicity also formed significant minorities.54 Situated in the north Caucasian frontier between the warring Ottoman and Safavid empires, Georgia had witnessed political fragmentation and the large-scale enslavement of its populations since the sixteenth century. Comparable numbers of Russian slaves in Aleppo resulted from the regular raiding operations in the northern Black Sea 55
littoral by the Ottoman vassal Crimean Tatars as from the sixteenth century onwards. The dominance of the Georgians and Russians a proportion of the total slave population marks the growing geostrategic importance of the confrontation between the Ottomans and Russians (and their vassal counterparts) along their common frontier in the seventeenth century. One should view the Aleppan urban notable households that acquired these slaves neither as a general template for urban notable households in other Ottoman cities nor as an internally undifferentiated elite class. Based on the available architectural evidence, Aleppan households appear to have been smaller in size than those in other
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major cities in the Arab provinces, not only Cairo but even the neighbouring Syrian city of Damascus.56 The ability of Aleppan households to maintain large contingents of retainers, including slaves, thus appears to have been comparatively limited. Just as important, the constituent groups of the urban notable stratum – the militaryadministrative cadres, the religious establishment and the merchant community – all had differing purposes, and therefore differing strategies in building their households. Immediately noticeable in a survey of manumissions, sales and purchases is the domination of slave-holding by military-administrative cadres, a group comprising soldiers and civil bureaucratic officials. Comprising roughly per cent of the urban population 57
if oneinincludes both irregular soldiers, figured about perregular cent ofand cases involving slaves.58military-administrative Reasons for this patterncadres abound. Grandees in this group accumulated slaves and placed them in state offices under their control as a means of extending their influence. Military cadres of higher ranks, compensated by timar assignments, were required by law to bring additional armed retainers on campaign, and slaves fit naturally in this role. More generally, the sale of slaves captured on the battlefield could bring the individual Ottoman soldier a sizeable income,59 or else the soldier could give slaves as gifts to cement ties and alliances.60 These practices were in addition to the more widespread strategy of employing slaves as household servants or concubines. In comparison with other social groups, the disproportionally large number of male slaves owned by these cadres61 suggests that they employed slaves primarily as soldiers, scribes, or servants working in male-dominated occupations directly supporting the master’s profession. In a way similar to the military-administrative cadres’ employment of slaves as supporting their primary occupation, merchants purchased larger numbers of male slaves to build up a reliable and trustworthy corps of commercial agents – agents who could expand the household’s trading network geographically and diversify its operations. Studies on a variety of Ottoman cities have shown that merchants relied heavily on freedmen to conduct business on their behalf and entrusted to them large amounts of capital.62 That merchants in this sample were second only to militaryadministrative cadres in the number of slaves they owned – they figured in per cent of all such cases – underscores the importance they attached to slaves in the building of households.63 The great importance of Aleppo as a node of international, long-distance commerce may also have had the effect of driving up the proportion of traders employing slaves. Certain other slave-owning groups among the urban notable and the general population are worth noting. Elite women, mostly female relatives of military-administrative elites, were the third most active as slave-owners, appearing in about per cent of all slave cases, reflecting the general access that military-administrative households had to slaves of both sexes. Theelite slaves of elite women almost entirely female, confirming the observation that women could andwere did develop their own separate, female retinues.64 The absolute number of slaves owned by the ulama, the broad class of educational, judicial and religious functionaries, is relatively small, but this may be the result more of the ulama’s small population than their lack of interest in owning slaves.65 The rough balance between male and female slaves owned by the ulama points to the relatively greater demand by these groups for female domestic service and/or concubinage. Among other Muslim groups, even artisans could own slaves, though only the wealthier members of this group could afford to do so. 66 Local Christians,
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who numbered roughly one-quarter of Aleppo’s population, were active as slave-owners, thought this seems to have been restricted largely to affluent male merchants.67 The heads of urban notable households, of whatever social group, could purchase slaves easily enough, but the process of inducing a slave to become a productive and self-content, eventually loyal, member of the household posed a major challenge. This study returns to the supposition that slavery is a kind of patronage that requires negotiation and accommodation, however lopsided, between master and slave. What follows is a selective survey of the actions that a household head could take to meet the slave ‘halfway’, to integrate him or her into the household. The master’s repertory included: ()al-walad the master’s formal recognition of() a slave as bequests the mother of his); child (umm status); () manumission; gifts (woman (wasiya hiba); () and () the naming of slaves as beneficiaries in charitable endowments (waqfs). As the most frequently encountered actions in the court records, umm al-walad status and manumission will be considered here. It should be acknowledged at the outset that the mutual acceptance between master and slave was always a contingent process and could easily result in the flight or resale of the slave for any number of reasons. With respect to flight, Ebussuud, head of the Ottoman religious hierarchy (şeyhülislam) in the mid-sixteenth century, was only the most prominent of many Ottoman jurists who issued legal opinions on fugitive slaves, underscoring the contemporary relevance of the issue.68 For their part, Ottoman judges routinely upheld the rights of slave-owners to recover their fugitive slaves, with judicial officials in different cities co-operating in the searches and investigations. The absolute number of cases dealing with fugitive slaves in the court records of Aleppo is small, but, where found, they indicate slaves being apprehended and returned to their owners, sometimes at a considerable geographical distance.69 Toledano’s extensive study of the lives of slaves in the nineteenth century indicates that a wide range of circumstances impelled slaves to flee. Some sought to avoid chronic physical abuse and forced abortion, while others ought to prevent resale or the break-up of a slave family through resale; still others sought simply to be free.70 For female slaves, one might argue that the key event of cultural and social integration was bearing a child by her master, which gave the woman umm al-walad (‘mother of the child’) status. By law, her child was a free-born Muslim, and after the birth she could not be resold.71 Actual practice varied considerably. Some masters, after having children with their female slaves, manumitted them and then immediately married them.72 If her child was a son, and that son possessed the qualities to succeed the master of the household, the status of his mother was further enhanced. Other masters, however, refused to grant the status or otherwise contravened the spirit of the law. Some masters after the birth of the child married the umm al-walad off to other per73
sons, or relatives, practice which the courtthe sometimes sanctioned. If theperhaps master clients died, his heirs nota infrequently challenged slave’s claims to the status.74 Overall, the court records present a mixed experience for female slaves with umm al-walad status, showing that the claim was frequently contested; even when the status was granted, its implementation was not guaranteed and had to be actively defended. Common to the experience of both female and male slaves was the hope of manumission. Islamic law prescribes three types, all of which are made unilaterally by the master: immediate or ‘pious’ manumission (‘itq), the grant of provisional manumis
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sion that takes effect after the death of the master (tadbir) and contractual manumission (mukataba), according to which the master grants the slave freedom in exchange for a fixed amount of money or labour. 75 Patterns of manumission in Aleppo suggest that the master in general used such an act only selectively as a strategy of accommodation and reconciliation addressing the concerns of the intended slave. According to the court records, per cent of all manumissions in Aleppo between and were immediate manumissions (‘itq). In comparison with the provisional and contractual types of manumission, immediate manumission is less likely to have been a planned and deliberate act by the master carried out specifically to reward or compensate his slave. By to their both the provisional and contractual signalled clearly thevery slavenature, that his master did not intend his bondagemanumissions to be indefinite. In many cases, other factors may have been more important in the timing of the manumissions. Studies of manumission in other Ottoman cities show that a variety of occasions – the circumcision of a son, conversion of the slave to Islam, a son’s marriage, the owner’s participation in a military campaign, and the promotion of the owner in the Ottoman hierarchy – prompted the owner to manumit. 76 Furthermore, of all the immediate manumissions documented in the Aleppo court records between and , roughly per cent were carried out as part of a longer series of two or more manumissions by the same slave-owner, pointing to the likelihood that manumission was the immediate outcome of some event in the personal life of the slave-owner and not a reflection of the relations between the individual slave and the owner. Another per cent took place in the context of an ongoing inheritance dispute, based on references in the text of the document; in these cases, the heirs freed the slaves left by the deceased. In sum, it seems that, by using immediate manumission in the overwhelming majority of cases, the master held his cards close to his chest, reminding the slave of his superior legal and social position, even at the risk of alienating him and driving him to flee or resist. CONCLUSION
In their recruitment of servants and slaves, the urban notables of Aleppo necessarily deployed different strategies, but the foundation of a cohesive and durable household was a common goal. Certain limited conclusions can be drawn with respect to the structure and dynamics of master–servant relations. The conclusions are limited because, as discussed above, the court dealt with the relations of service ( khidma) and clientage (intisab) only insofar as they entailed some contractual exchange of material value or touched on the primacy of (Sunni) Islam as a religious affiliation. First, and related to the court’s purview, it should be confirmed that, as complex organizations, urban notable households enjoyed an in whichinthey set custom and resolved internal disputes without recourse to autonomy the court system, contrast with other organizations such as guilds, residential neighbourhoods and locally assigned military units, which regularly brought such matters to the qadi’s attention.77 Second, if sixteenthcentury records reflect a longer-term reality, methods used by local household heads to recruit servants and retainers were not homogeneously informal but rather included the court-regulated self-rental contract, which appears to have been employed especially to secure durable relationships with young men migrating from other parts of the empire. Third, urban notable groups, ranging from the religious establishment
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to military cadres, appear to have engaged in the practice of adopting children, with the full assent of adult male relatives, as a way of building their households, perhaps used selectively to target children with exceptional potential. The overall impression of how households employed servants and clients is one of pragmatism, flexibility and fluidity. With respect to slaves, the court records suggest that the relationship between them and their masters was based on a reciprocity whose scope and nature varied greatly with the personality of the household head and the domestic tone he set. Just as there were masters who manumitted and married the slave mothers of their children, there were others who exploited them simply as concubines. of manumissions, however, suggests a more general tendency on the part The of thepattern household head to preserve control. The predominant use of immediate manumission (‘itq) and the virtual absence of other, long-term manumission arrangements point to prevailing household culture in which the authority of the household head was robust. The paucity of court records documenting the grievances of slaves with respect to their master’s treatment, and the matched paucity of instances of resistance and flight, suggests a household culture where slaves may have found some social space within which they found consolation and managed to cope. Toledano’s recent synthesis of scholarship on slave diaspora communities in the empire contends that slaves were able to adapt psychologically to the foreignness of their new environment in part through participation in collective rituals that preserved elements of their srcinal cultures. 78 NOTES Akdağ ; İnalcık ; İnalcık a: , –; Abou-el-Haj ; Kunt . Works that provide case studies of provincial grandees include Griswold ; Cohen ; Rafeq ; and Sakaoğlu . Hathaway ; Peirce : –. For an excellent overview and critique of askeri-reaya boundaries, see Canbakal . Tucker ; Duben , ; Duben and Behar ; Gerber ; Cuno ; Establet and Pascual . The classic formulation of the urban notables as political players is Hourani . Meriwether : –, passim. Findley . See, for example, Peirce : –; Hathaway : –; Meriwether : –. On the intisab relationship in the Ottoman official class, see Findley : –. On the related medieval institution of istisna, see Mottahedeh : –. Slave-holding in the Ottoman empire should be viewed as only one part of a broader social phenomenon in the early modern Mediterranean basin. Scholars have given considerable attention to the slave-holding practices of the Tuscans. See, for example, Bono , . Ze’evi . of law court records preserved in the National Archives of Syria, see Marino and For a catalogue Okawara . References to such records hereafter will be abbreviated as SMS, followed by the volume and page numbers and the date in both Islamic Hijra and Common Era forms. Perhaps the best brief discussion of this bias is Doumani : –. For a fuller discussion of these issues, see Ergene : –. For an overview of Ottoman guilds in this period, see Faroqhi : –. Tyan ; al-H.alabi : –; and Shaykhzada : II, –. SMS : ; cf. SMS : . SMS : .
— Masters, servants and slaves — Fleischer a: –. Mottahedeh : –. The person who hires out his labour in this way is called an ajir khass. See Tyan ; al-H.alabi : ; and Shaykhzada : II, . SMS : . The qibrisi coin referred to in the document may be the Venetian ducat. The island of Cyprus (Ar. Qibris) was ruled by Venice at the time. For some suggestive evidence, see SMS : . Fleischer a: . While khadim was sometimes used to refer to eunuchs, it is clear that, in the vast majority of cases considered here, that was not what was meant; see Lewis : ; Redhouse : –. For an example of subaşı employment, from , see SMS : . In this capacity, servants could also contract loans with villagers on behalf of their patrons. SMS : . The revenues of the village of Abin (located in the district of Ma’arrat Misrin south-west of Aleppo) may srcinally have been assigned as a prebend to Hajj Mehmed Efendi when he was defterdar. Thereafter he was able to maintain de facto fiscal control over the village, probably through moneylending. SMS : . SMS : . SMS : . Indeed, missing from this document is any mention of claims between the two parties that might result from loans, commissions or other commercial interactions; perhaps these matters had been settled in another document. SMS : , dated /; SMS : , dated /; SMS : , dated /. On the coin known in Arabic as the ghirsh asadi (pl. ghurush asadi), or the Dutch leuventhaler, see Pamuk : –. SMS .–, On the practice of nafaqa , see. Meron ; de Bellefonds a. Salati: : ; Meriwether : SMS : . SMS : . Sonbol : . SMS : –. SMS : , dated /. Eremya Çelebi Kömürcüyan : x. Toledano : ; : . Kunt : –; Faroqhi : ; Peirce : ; and Toledano : –. Toledano : . Ibid. Wilkins forthcoming . For a study of enslavement of free Muslim persons in the late Ottoman empire, see Saydam . On the enslavement of Muslim Shii groups, see Erdem : –. SMS : .
On the–. role of soldiers in the Aleppan credit market, see Masters : –; and Wilkins : Wilkins forthcoming . Studies on other Ottoman cities provide some comparison and contrast. See Sak : ; Jennings : . Zilfi : –. Wilkins forthcoming . İnalcık : –; İnalcık : I, –; Brunschvig . Hathaway : –, –; Khoury : –; Meriwether : –; Abdel Nour : .
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Wilkins : –. Wilkins : II, . İnalcık : –, ; Raymond –: II, –; and Zilfi : . See, for example, Hathaway b; : . Wilkins forthcoming . For evidence of this practice in Edirne, see Barkan : . On Bursa, see İnalcık : ; and Sahillioğlu : . On Ankara, see Ongan : , . For evidence of such practices in the court records of Aleppo, see Meriwether : , ; SMS : , dated /; and SMS : –, dated /. Wilkins : II, –. For Ibid.: II, –.of the ulama as slave-owners, see Zilfi : –. a discussion Raymond –: II, –; Fisher b: ; Faroqhi b: . Patterns in Aleppo contrast with those of Cairo, where large numbers of artisans owned slaves. This, according to Raymond, highlights the degree to which slave-holding was integrated into the Egyptian social structure. SMS : , dated /; SMS : , dated /. Düzdağ : –; Çatalcalı Ali Efendi : –; Minkarizade Yahya, Harvard Law School Library MS : –; and Yenişehirli Abdullah : –. For a focused discussion on fugitives in the early sixteenth century, see Seng : –. SMS : , dated /; SMS : , dated /. For other studies, see Seng : –; Seng : –; Sak : –; Walz : –; Ongan : . Toledano : –. Schacht ; Brunschvig . See, for example, SMS : , dated /. SMS : , dated /; SMS : , dated /; SMS : , dated /. Tucker Fisher b: Zilfi : –. SMS Examples of women coming to umm ; al-walad court in: Aleppo–; to defend their status include : , dated /; SMS : , dated /; SMS : , dated /. Brunschvig ; cf. Erdem : –. The granting of permission ( idhn) to the slave to conduct commercial affairs on behalf of the master (and thus attain ma’dhun status) was another way of showing favour to a slave and reducing his legal incapacity. See de Bellefonds b; Marmon : , . Fisher b: , citing Galabov . Wilkins . Toledano : –.
CHAPTER TWENTYONE
SUB JEC T TO THE SULTAN’S APPROVAL Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century artisans negotiating guild agreements in Istanbul
Suraiya Faroqhi
O
ttoman non-elites and their daily lives entered the historiography of the twentieth century quite late, apart perhaps from long-distance traders, the most privileged members of this milieu. However, historians of the twenty-first century are ready to make up for lost time; after a long period of neglect, Ottoman craftsmen and occasionally even craftswomen have come in for a share of attention. Before the s they had appeared but seldom even in urban histories, although as notable exceptions we might mention the work of Fahri Dalsar on Bursa, Robert Mantran on Istanbul and André Raymond on Cairo.1 But, in recent years, individual men, women and families have attracted the attention of historians, and micro-history has become a recognized part of Ottomanist historical production.2 As has long been the case in European history of the later Middle Ages and the early modern period, Ottomanist researchers have come to focus on the manner in which artisans related to one another. By analysing a particular instance of such relationships, namely the manner in which guildsmen ‘checked up’ on one another, scholars have tried to gauge the extent of guild autonomy. Viewing this issue from a different perspective, however, we can also discern how, by observing one another and bringing deviant behaviour to the attention of the authorities, guildsmen functioned as cogs in the machinery of social and political control. Put differently: when artisans enforced guild rules, they also facilitated the work of the officially instituted market inspector (muhtesib).3 But we have learned, too, that there were always some craftsmen who managed to increase the volume of their business by ‘working around’ the regulations that, in principle, should have circumscribed their every move.4 Moreover, artisan guilds,artisan whichactivities until about twenty years ago were more regarded as organizations constraining in a manner that remained or less unchanged from around to the mid-nineteenth century, are now understood to have had a history of their own. In addition, guilds in Sarajevo, Damascus or Istanbul operated in ways peculiar to the town or city in which their members lived and worked: within the broad framework of Ottoman imperial practices there was considerable room for variation. We now know that, in the early s, both in Bursa and Istanbul, it was fairly easy to enter or leave a craft organization. At least in the former
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city, paying one’s taxes together with a given guild sufficed to qualify a man as an artisan member in good standing.5 Or, by entering into the right partners hips with people from other guilds, an artisan might take on jobs which normally were the province of a different set of craftsmen.6 By the second half of the eighteenth century, however, in many if not most trades a master had to have acquired a ‘slot’ (gedik). Only after he had taken possession of such a ‘bundle of rights and obligations’ could he exercise his specialty, usually in a predetermined place but sometimes in a locale of his own choosing.7 Masters now frequently exercised minute control over their fellows, and those who did not conform might even risk losing their rights to live in the capital at all. But these negative balanced by positive of mutual support. In Bursa and constraints other placesoften in thewere eighteenth century, guildsmeasures set up foundations that provided low-interest credit to artisans and often also helped finance the common meals and picnics that must have contributed significantly to the formation of social solidarities.8 Thus, in terms of organizational cohesion, Ottoman guilds reached their apogee in the late s and early s, just before dissolution began in the second half of the nineteenth century. THE SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTEXT The capital as the empire’s marketplace
Istanbul artisans did not live and produce in a socio-political vacuum. However, the context in which they acted was mainly local, as very few of their products went to customersfor in articles the provinces or abroad. In terms such of bulk, the demand of their fellow urbanites of everyday consumption, as bread, grape syrup, yoghurt, rough cloaks and shoes, must have made up by far the largest share of the production of Istanbul craftsmen. Istanbul has been aptly described as the ‘capital and belly’ of the whole empire.9 Yet even the production of everyday goods would not have been feasible if the sultans and their administration had not resided in Istanbul. In essence, the city’s artisans, though moderately endowed with worldly goods and often downright poor or even miserable, depended for their remuneration on funds contributed by the provinces. It was the taxes paid by provincials that permitted the Ottoman elite to purchase craft products, and on account of a ‘trickle-down’ effect, provincial tax revenues found their way at least partly into the purses of Istanbul craftsmen. In turn, these people and their labourers used their earnings to buy bread, floor coverings, prayer rugs, shoes and other articles of ordinary consumption. Moreover, part of the capital’s population served the sultans directly. Admittedly, the ruler’s often a poor paymaster. But, on other hand,ofartisans specialized in court luxurywas crafts, such as fine bookbinding, thethe manufacture articleswho adorned with inlays of ivory and precious woods, or else the manufacture of silks and brocades, all depended to a considerable extent on palace custom. In addition the palace provided many of its employees with basic clothes and foodstuffs: therefore official purchases by no means involved only items of superior quality. High dignitaries supplemented palace demand; the goods bought by vezirs and the princesses to whom they were often married may have been somewhat less costly than
— Artisans negotiating guild agreements in Istanbul —
those demanded for the sultans’ use. But these elite households made up in quantity for the perhaps slightly lower quality of their purchases. Dignitaries active in the capital belonged to a socio-political category known as the sultans’ servitors, the askeri; at least in the seventeenth century these people kept their distance from the ordinary taxpayers known as the reaya, or ‘flock’, which the elite claimed to protect but which they certainly ‘milked and sheared’ as well. By the s this old division began to lose some of its sharpness, but it would be an exaggeration to claim that even by this time the privileges of the askeri had completely disappeared. Some members of the Ottoman elite, such as vezirs or top-level religious scholars, might be of very wealthy. High-level dignitaries typically to provide forcould large numbers people. A well-appointed household, whoseneeded members the head mobilize when sent to govern a province or serve as an officer on campaign or as a judge in a large provincial city, was often a prerequisite for high office. Retainers had to be clothed and fed and often enough supplied with arms as well. While household heads and their relatives demanded silks and brocades in addition to winter garments lined with costly furs, rough woollens and leather more or less protected the guards and servitors employed in their households from the cold humid winds of the Istanbul winter. As a result, the capital’s craftsmen – and occasionally craftswomen – got to cater for a clientele that was not only huge but also extremely diverse, even within the askeri sector. Askeris of more modest status included officials employed in the main naval arsenal of Kasımpaşa, a populous neighbourhood near the Golden Horn. A large number of janissaries were permanently stationed in the barracks of Etmeydanı, near today’s Aksaray in the middle of the downtown area, and in the immediate vicinity of the sultan’s palace as well. In addition, the city housed the offices of the central administration with its scribes and accountants. For the most part these people should have demanded goods of medium to modest quality. Nevertheless, once again this market owed its entire existence to the fact that the empire was administered from Istanbul. Even wealthy non-askeris such as merchants specializing in interregional and ‘interempire’ trade, who must themselves have been in the market for at least some highquality goods, often owed their resources to the fact that Istanbul was the capital, and its denizens demanded items that would not have found many buyers in provincial towns. Because of the significance of this ‘politically determined’ demand, Istanbul’s craftsmen revolted when towards the end of the seventeenth century the long-term residence of the sultans in Edirne made them suspect that the capital might formally be transferred to that city. When Ahmed III (–) followed his brother on the Ottoman throne, he therefore had to promise that, from now on, he would reside in Istanbul on a permanent basis.10 However, Istanbulthose artisans monopolize the local market: provincial manufacturers, especially fromdid thenot empire’s core territories, competed with their colleagues at the seat of Ottoman government. When in late the Moroccan ambassador al-Tamghru¯tī visited Istanbul, this wealth of goods greatly impressed him; he added that many inhabitants of the city had a perhaps excessive concern with making money. According to a mid-seventeenth-century Ottoman price register, the markets of the capital also were full of the cottons and leathers of Manisa, the woollens of Salonika, the carpets of Uşak and the silks of Bursa or Damascus.11 Nor was the abundance of provincial products a matter of chance: after all, the inhabitants of the provinces
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every year sent large quantities of silver to Istanbul in form of taxes and needed to ‘earn back’ some of this coin so that, next year, they could continue to pay their dues. 12 If they did not want to lose out against provincial competitors, Istanbul manufacturers thus needed to provide goods that were comparable both in quality and price. But at least all artisans supplying the capital were able to count on the custom of a large population. For, by the standards of the period studied here, Istanbul was an enormous conurbation. Admittedly for our period we have no official counts, just more or less realistic estimates by travellers. At the very end of the eighteenth century, the French doctor Antoine Olivier suggested a figure of half a million for the city intra muros – in other words, the triangle enclosed the Byzantine walls – inGalata addition the suburbs. As for the latter, they should havebyincluded Üsküdar, Eyüp, andtoa 13 number of villages along the Bosporus and the Golden Horn. A scholar who recently has examined a series of fragmentary official counts has concluded that, by the year , the same area held a population of about , men and women. 14 In the seventeenth century the figure may have been somewhat lower, as the Bosporus villages mainly became attached to Istanbul in the course of the eighteenth century. Throughout, population must have been highly variable: the numerous plague epidemics of the times killed off many people, but immigration, both legal and clandestine, must have filled the gaps, often in fairly short order.
Government demands
While Istanbul artisans were thus intimately concerned with the urban market, this was certainly not a place where supply and demand were permitted free rein. The Ottoman administration was a firm believer in price-fixing, and artisans generally could count on only a very modest margin of profit: per cent was the norm, with per cent allowed in exceptional cases. 15 It is hard to say to what extent these figures are realistic: for, if an artisan worked with cheap inputs, we may wonder whether a to per cent profit sufficed to feed his family, keep up his inventory and pay his taxes. Presumably in some cases artisan wives added something to the family budget. In , blacksmiths working for the naval arsenal in Kasımpaşa declared that they could not continue their work unless their wives were permitted to sell paça, cooked sheep’s trotters that consumers typically purchased ready-made. A guild of paçacıs had protested against this competition, but the needs of the naval arsenal always came first.16 Occasionally we hear of certain artisans who refused to work for the low pay offered on the sultans’ projects. In the s, after a major devaluation of the currency, workmen on an officially sponsored construction site expressed their discontent through collective this kind. Officials mustwage: have recognized that the site wouldconcernremain abandonedaction unlessofthey increased the daily the two sultanic commands ing this affair record such a concession. But, presumably even then, the wage offered was not too generous, for one of the documents concludes with the threat that builders refusing to work at the new rate should expect exemplary punishment. 17 Even so, some of the workmen evidently were not willing to accept the wages offered. We do not have many other documents recording pre-nineteenth-century work stoppages: whether such events were in fact rare or whether officials merely chose to not record them must remain an open question.
— Artisans negotiating guild agreements in Istanbul —
In wartime, moreover, certain Istanbul artisans were needed to serve the sultan’s armies and navy in person. Craftsmen skilled in the building and outfitting of ships who worked for private patrons in peacetime were a major target for recruitment; at least in the later s, they supplemented the relatively small workforce that ran the naval arsenal in peacetime.18 Rowers for the galleys continued to be important in Mediterranean warfare well into the seventeenth century and sometimes beyond. Certain guilds thus were saddled with the obligation to supply rowers to the sultan’s fleet. Among them were the boatmen who ferried people up and down the Bosporus and across the Golden Horn: the latter were numerous, for the first bridge appeared only in had tothe supply rowers. Presumably their service wasthe notmid-s. due to anyTavern-keepers special skills, butalso because administration regarded tavern-keepers as part of the city’s riff-raff. Rowing galleys was hard work and dangerous to boot; caught in the holds of the ships and sometimes chained, rowers were more at risk than any other category of sailors. Thus, in spite of the privileges that came with residence in the capital, many Istanbul artisans thus lived lives full of toil and trouble. THE SOURCES
Istanbul is especially attractive to the historian of artisans, because large numbers of craftspeople were active in the city and the Ottoman administration took a close interest in all matters connected to its capital. We therefore possess a significant number of documents, many more than for other Ottoman cities apart, perhaps, from Cairo. Some of this material was compiled by the bureaucrats of the baş muhasebe (chief accountancy office), instituted already in the s, but which became much more active and visible in the eighteenth century. While the baş muhasebe was to audit all expenditures made by the central administration, 19 its registers contained information about quite a few matters that bore at most an indirect relation to auditing. Documents concerning tax farms also shed light on the problems of certain Ottoman crafts. 20 However, the language of these records differed significantly from the everyday Turkish in which the majority of craftsmen must have voiced their concerns – if indeed they expressed themselves in this language. For many artisans spoke Greek, Armenian or Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish that, after , Spanish Jews driven out of the Iberian peninsula by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had brought to the sultans’ capital. Non-Muslim artisans often must have relied on translators, and inevitably this intervention caused the statements of these craftsmen to be even more vigorously ‘edited’ than those that had srcinally been made in Ottoman Turkish. We thus cannot expect to hear any artisan ‘voices’ of the s and s without mediation. No diaries or letters from this period written by craftsmen have yet been found, and, while some writings of this yet surface, at present we must limit ourselves to what Ottoman scribes sawtype fit tomay record. While the archives thus offer us a fairly broad source basis, for the most part this material reflects the preoccupations of the state elite. The registers of the kadis, for instance, of which a few samples are now available and which contain significant collections of documents relevant to Istanbul artisans, are written in the ‘legalese’ favoured by the scribes.21 Officials working for the central administration authored many further documents concerning artisan affairs, and were also much concerned with conformity to ‘proper’ stylistic patterns.22 Thus in the mid-eighteenth century
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no mention of a newly enthroned sultan would have been complete without a reference to the ‘august good fortune’ of this event, even if the matter at issue was a dispute over the types of shoes that a given guild of shoemakers was – or was not – permitted to manufacture. What is the connection between the enthronement of a sultan and such a ‘border dispute’ between guilds? Many quarrels doubtless were solved by oral agreements between guild masters, with at most the market inspector intervening. In such cases there was little reason to put the matter in writing. If the guildsmen needed official confirmation, they could apply to the kadi’s court, which in certain respects operated rather the office a notary public. scribes, of a fee,like would recordofthe agreement andHere the the names of thepresumably contractingagainst partiespayment in their registers. For the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth, the agreements about which we have information all come from this source, apart from a few chance finds in the different chancery registers of the central administration.23 But, especially from the mid-s onwards, many guilds applied for and received sultanic confirmations for inter-guild – and occasionally intra-guild – arrangements. Mostly these regulations governed relations between craft organizations that either produced similar wares or else needed to work together because they were involved in a single process of manufacturing. Thus a number of guilds organized the makers of different kinds of shoes, slippers and boots, and occasionally the members had to determine, not always amicably, who was to make what. At the same time, shoemakers worked different types of leather that tanners had previously manufactured from skins and hides which, in their turn, they had bought from the city’s butchers. Such chains of purchasing raw and semi-finished materials were liable to cause disputes as well. Once regulations had been officially confirmed, they were known as nizam. While the rules at issue were often short and simple, the documents that gave them official validity were lengthy and convoluted, in the style favored by officialdom. 24 Being sultanic commands, the nizams were valid only for the reign of the ruler who had issued them. Once this latter personage was no longer on the throne, the craftsmen who wanted the old regulations confirmed had to apply for a document issued by the new ruler. This regulation already existed in the sixteenth century, but only in the s did officialdom produce special registers containing only the official commands submitted to the new ruler and approved by him. While many edicts were in fact confirmed over decades, and indeed centuries – conforming to tradition was an important value in Ottoman statecraft25 – no sultan was bound by the regulations of his predecessor. Quite possibly the officials who served the newly enthroned sultan disapproved of certain nizams and made sure that they were not confirmed. In other cases, artisans probably argued with oneall,another over the would question of whether not they artisans should seek confirmation. After any regulation have benefitedorparticular and hampered the businesses of others. But when and if the ruler refused confirmation, or else the guildsmen preferred not to seek it, the scribes apparently made no record of this fact. Therefore we can only assume that such cases may have occurred, but we have no way of analysing them. Our discussion will be based on documents found in the register of commands issued by Osman III (–), recently deceased, and confirmed by his successor, Mustafa III (–). Most of these texts are nizams: but we also have an
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interesting case in which a regulation had not as yet received official confirmation, although at least a number of guildsmen wanted this to happen and applied for the relevant sultanic document.26 The items treated here are only a small selection of the texts concerning artisans in this large and informative register. They have been selected because they throw some light on the manner in which eighteenth-century guilds negotiated agreements and also because they let us see some of the considerations which might affect the outcome. NIZAM
HOW A S NE GOTI ATED: BEATING THEWA COMPETITION
We will begin with negotiations involving the grocers (bakkal), whose shops, as the ancestors of supermarkets and hyper-markets, must have supplied the foodstuffs and basic notions that the inhabitants of the capital needed every day. For the time being, only the nizams of the Galata and Üsküdar grocers have emerged, although quite obviously the city intra muros and the nearby town of Eyüp possessed similar agreements.27 In Üsküdar, sixty-two recognized grocers had set up shop, and more recently the town quarter of İhsaniye had emerged as a nucleus of dense settlement, bringing the number up to sixty-four.28 The text concerning Galata contains more detailed information, probably because many more grocers tried to make a living in this commercialized area. Furthermore, Galata contained what might be called Istanbul’s ‘factory districts’, namely the cannon foundry known as Tophane as well as the naval arsenal of Kasımpaşa.29 The labourers employed in these workplaces patronized grocers’toshops breaks or before they returned home probably in the evenings. According the either this concennizam,during trated population permitted grocers to make a living. However, according to a pattern well known from earlier and later years, these shopkeepers had serious competitors whose ‘nefariousness’ they denounced in no uncertain terms: ‘in corners, on the borders [of the settled area] and in/between town quarters’, people who had not provided the proper guarantors had set up illegal grocer’s shops. 30 When such an ‘intruder’ defaulted on his payments to a wholesaler, the latter had no recourse and, after such an experience, tended to distrust all other grocers as well. We may assume that the guildsmen, having little capital, often needed credit from their wholesalers, but, if the merchants had doubts about getting paid, either conditions of credit might be more onerous or credit might not be forthcoming at all. The nizam of the Galata grocers also regulated a boundary dispute between this guild and that of the greengrocers (manav). Itinerant salesmen or ‘basket-men’ (küfeci) bore the grocers’ accusation; from the watchful eyes of these men,the thebrunt küfeciof supposedly sold items that,away according to the arrangements of theguildstime, should have been available only in grocers’ shops. Unfortunately, our nizam does not specify the disputed goods. However, the peddlers did not operate on their own but were in the employ of certain greengrocers. We can thus compare them to the bread-sellers (iskemlecis) attached to some bakeries who sold the bread baked by their employers, probably in improvised shelters or out in the open when the weather was good.31 But the iskemlecis were legal, at least as long as their employers did not increase
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the number of their aides beyond the permitted limits, while the grocers certainly did not consider the ‘basket-men’ as legitimate traders. In another nizam, milkmen and manufacturers of yoghurt regulated similar matters.32 Once again, the agreement was about limiting the number of shops (karhane) where the milkmen sold their wares and the yoghurt-makers manufactured their yoghurt. Thirty-nine such workplaces were in existence at the time, two located in Galata, five in Eyüp and one in the settlement of Çömlekçiler in the immediate vicinity of the latter township. Five further shopkeepers had chosen to operate from within vegetable gardens (bostan), and one of them even produced a special kind of yoghurt yoğurdu known ‘garden land yoghurt’ ). Quite workshops situated near theasIstanbul walls,( bostan in town quarters sucha asfewSultan Selim, were Ayvansarayı, Tekfursarayı or Karagümrük. These locations make good sense insofar as milk easily spoils in transport, and our guildsmen therefore wanted to be close to the dairy farms (mandıra) from which they purchased their milk: these mandıras often operated just outside the land walls.33 Thus the agreement established fixed locations where milk might legitimately be sold and yoghurt manufactured. In other words, the gediks were now the major organizational principle of this guild. According to the craftsmen concerned, the existing shops sufficed for the needs of the Istanbul population, and they therefore forbade the opening of new ones. Unfortunately our text does not say anything about the productive capacity of the recognized shops and workshops. Even if we assume that not only the sultan’s palace but also the residences of certain pashas and the janissary barracks had their own sources of supply, the existence of no more than thirty-nine milk and yoghurt shops for a population in the range of , does not point to a widespread consumption of milk products in mid-eighteenth-century Istanbul. Perhaps one day we will be able to follow the changes in food customs through which yoghurt became a mainstay of the city’s diet, but at present we cannot document this process.
HOW A NIZAM WA S NE GOTI ATED: CRAFT SOLIDARITIES
Istanbul milkmen sold only milk and apparently did not own ewes or cows. Thus the agreement recorded in touched the dairy farmers as well as the milk-sellers and their allies the yoghurt-makers. Every spring, so the text tells us, the three groups had come together to decide the price of milk, and it had not been customary to sell this essential commodity without a prior agreement on prices. Our text particularly specifies that the yoghurt-makers had always been involved in the determination of the milk price. Apparently men also agreedmilk-sellers that, whenand one yoghurt-makers shop-owner had shared boughtworkshops; milk from a and giventhese dairyguildsfarm, no other milkman or yoghurt-manufacturer had the right to offer a higher price and thus take the milk away from the srcinal purchaser. The guildsmen further expressed their trade solidarity by stipulating that, if one shop-owner’s milk went sour, the others were to share their supplies with him. They also promised not to hire away labourers who were already employed as servants and aides by fellow guildsmen, an agreement which was obviously meant to keep down the wages which these workmen might
— Artisans negotiating guild agreements in Istanbul —
demand.34 Milk-sellers and yoghurt-manufacturers further agreed to pay their taxes to the state as a group. At some unspecified time in the past, the guildsmen had promised each other that they would faithfully abide by this agreement and, as we have seen, not allow the opening of further shops for the sale of milk and yoghurt. Now they claimed that they had always fulfilled their mutual promises and therefore applied for the sultan’s confirmation of their agreement. This text is interesting in several respects. First of all we learn that guildsmen and dairy farmers among themselves agreed upon the price of milk, and no official intervened to enforce an administratively determined price ( narh). This text therefore answers the question which historians sometimes to which have offered only hypothetical answers: howhave did prices comeposed aboutbut in cases wherethey particular types of goods did not appear in official price lists? In this case, and presumably in others as well, guilds represented by their headmen ( kethüda, yiğitbaşı) came to an agreement with the owners of the goods they wished to purchase and who in their turn also might be organized in guild-like structures. Unfortunately, we do not know anything specific about the organization of the dairy farmers in mid-eighteenth-century Istanbul; they may or may not have possessed a guild. RELIGION AND GUILD BOUNDARIES
Last but not least, our text is remarkable because the guild of milk-sellers and yoghurtmanufacturers had a membership that was religiously mixed. Fourteen workshops were the property of probably thirteen Muslims, while the remaining guild members were Orthodox: the names sound Greek for the most part, with a few Slavic-sounding names among them. Thus the guild members evidently believed that solidarity, including the sharing of scarce milk supplies, was possible even across religious boundaries. Regrettably our text does not specify which taxes were to be paid in common. Perhaps the artisans referred to the dues payable to the market inspector (ihtisabiye), for obviously the head tax ( cizye) owed by Christians only would not have involved the Muslim members of the milk-sellers and yoghurt-manufacturers’ guild. But in other cases relations between Muslims and non-Muslims seem to have been less amicable. Tensions are apparent from an agreement between two guilds that were both concerned with the trade in shoes. 35 On one side we find the shoemakers ( haffaf ). These craftsmen had their shops in a structure that can be described as the ancestor of the modern shopping centre, namely a covered shop-lined street (arasta ) near the Sultan Bayezid mosque; presumably the area is today part of Is tanbul’s Great Bazaar. In any case, the headman ( kethüda ) of the arasta and his adjunct the yiğitbaşı were accompanied by the kethüda of one of the two covered markets 36
bedesten (these , bezazistan ) that formed of the Istanbul businessofdistrict. All senior guildsmen were s – centre in other words, descendants the Prophet seyyidthe Muhammad – and the kethüda of the covered market had even memorized the Koran and therefore bore the title of hafız . Among the ordinary guild members, too, some people had made the pilgrimage to Mecca and others laid claim to the title of seyyid .37 Thus the shoemakers’ guild, which had only Muslim member s, should have had a pronounced religious character, and we may hypothesize that in this milieu many artisans were committed to the traditions of Islamic mysticis m and religiously based morality ( fütuvvet).38
— Suraiya Faroqhi —
As the second party, we find the guild of cobblers (eskici), which was subordinate to the shoemakers. Its members were all Christians and most of their names appear to be Armenian. According to the agreement, it had been ‘ancient custom’ (ez kadim) that the shoemakers sold newly made shoes while the cobblers refurbished used and old ones, which they then offered for sale. However, at an unspecified time in the past the cobblers had branched out into the trade in new shoes, and this initiative had sparked a great dispute between the two guilds. While a sultanic command had already once forbidden the cobblers to impinge on the territory of the shoemakers, apparently this order had been honoured mostly in the breach. At the time of the agreement, the cobguruş and39The parashoemakers blers owned new shoes worth , a substantial at a time when a village house changed hands for nowsum agreed to buy the guruş. new shoes, while the cobblers promised that in the future they would not deal in these more prestigious goods. At the very end of our text, almost as an afterthought, the shoemakers also promised not to deal in old and used shoes. Apparently the infringement of guild boundaries had not been altogether one-sided. As a final step the guildsmen sought official confirmation for their agreement, srcinally concluded before the enthronement of Mustafa III. In this case the hierarchy between shoemakers and cobblers was quite obvious. The shoemakers appeared as pious Muslims and their headmen were descendants of the Prophet; and some of these guildsmen must have been wealthy enough to afford a pilgrimage to Mecca. By contrast the cobblers were modest ‘unbelieving’ folk who probably did not enjoy great esteem in the eyes of officialdom. Yet the saga of the new shoes indicates that the shoemakers did not have it all their own way: while we have no way of knowing whether the guruş and para were an adequate price for the shoes turned over to the shoemakers, at least the latter did have to pay something. How good it would be to know whether this agreement had been reached without external mediation, merely by the parties concerned, or whether the market inspector, the kadi or even agents of the central administration had had a hand in it.
CONCLUSION
Many of the major concerns of eighteenth-century artisans were not exactly new: already in the s, certain artisans had vigorously attempted to limit the number of shops in their respective trades.40 Yet in the earlier period definite ‘slots’ or gediks had not been so widespread, while in the s we observe that, at least in Istanbul, one craft after another formally limited the numbers of masters legitimately in operation and often also determined the places where the latter might bake, prepare halva, sew or sell. In certain cases, Istanbul’s artisans made the relevant decisions from around 41
. In other cases, hard times that theencouraged sultan’s subjects experienced during the Russo-Ottoman war ofthe – presumably artisans to divide up a sorely 42 diminished market. In all these cases, guildsmen may have felt open to challenge, for opponents might claim that the gediks were novelties. Perhaps the artisans’ concern about legitimizing their restrictive measures was one of the reasons why, by the mid-eighteenth century, they were no longer satisfied with oral agreements or records in the registers of the local kadi. Given the changed circumstances, they now wanted a sultanic command, properly authenticated by a tuğra, whose elaborate calligraphy ornamented as well as confirmed the decrees of Ottoman
— Artisans negotiating guild agreements in Istanbul —
rulers. Furthermore, many craftsmen had probably become disillusioned after experiencing scores of times that their rivals, more or less with impunity, broke the rules and agreements documented by the kadis of their own localities. Due to the closeness of the central administration and the availability of its different recording facilities, petitioners – including quite a few artisans – may well have decided that they stood a better chance of enforcing their rules and regulations if the latter possessed the sanction of the central administration. Seen from another angle, Ottoman officials may also have encouraged artisans to submit their agreements to the central administration and receive them back as offinizam cially confirmed By mid-century, Ottoman centreInhad lost a good deal of its former influence in s.many of the more the remote provinces. reaction, the government seems to have tried to strengthen its ties to those people over whom it continued to exercise direct control, and the , to , inhabitants of the capital and its environs must have topped the list. We can therefore assume that, on this particular matter, the interests of the artisans and those of the Ottoman government coincided. A need for protection and legitimization on the craftsmen’s side, and a need for continuing involvement with the affairs of its subjects on the part of the governing elite, resulted in the bureaucratic records that provide so much of the information on which we base our analyses of eighteenth-century artisan life.
NOTES Dalsar ; Mantran ; Raymond –. Analogous with the practice in other disciplines (for instance, Hispanist or Byzantinist), we will refer to all scholars who from the late s to the present day have worked on Ottoman history, literature or art as ‘Ottomanists’. Kütükoğlu . İnalcık ; Yi . Gerber : . Yi : –. Akarlı –, . Faroqhi b; Faroqhi . Mantran : . Abou-el-Haj : . Kütükoğlu : –. Bayly : . Olivier : . Başaran : . Yi : . Faroqhi . Barkan –: II, . Bostan : . Başbakanlık Osmanlı arşivi rehberi: –. Genç . Aykut ; Aydın and Tak . Veinstein . İnalcık –; Dalsar ; Yi . Kal’a –: I. Genç . BOA, Maliye Ahkâm Defteri [MAD] , p. , /
— Suraiya Faroqhi — MAD , pp. and , /–. These other documents, if found, would enable us to assess the density of habitation in these four settlements, today all part of Greater Istanbul. MAD , pp. ; Konyalı : I, . Bacqué-Grammont ; Bostan . MAD , p. , /–. Aynural : –. MAD : , /–. No milk or yoghurt shops are on record for Üsküdar and, where intra muros Istanbul is concerned, our document mentions many shops without specifying their approximate locations. It is therefore impossible to produce a convincing map.
Yılmaz :of. Although the government had abolished guilds before thetoFirst Worldrule. War, the by-laws the association of Izmir shoemakers from /– refer a similar MAD , p. , /–. İnalcık –. Kılıç . On fütuvvet, see Gölpınarlı –, –. Kal’a –: IV, . Altınay [] –: –. Faroqhi . Akarlı –.
CHAPTER TWENTYTWO
LITE RACY AMO NG ARTI SANS AND TRADESMEN IN OTTOMAN CAIRO
Nelly Hanna
LITERACY AND ILLITERACY OF ARTISANS
T
he study of literacy has experienced a tremendous expansion in the last few decades, and consequently we know much more now about literacy in Europe in both the medieval and the early modern period, with some countries such as France and England being more studied than others. When we turn to the Arab and Ottoman world, what is known about the period before modern times (c.–) is relatively limited, and the subject has not been given much consideration by historians. Research on education hasoftended to focus on learned men, the ulama or bureaucreligious scholars who formed part the religious educational establishment and the racy. We know a lot about the Azhar in the eighteenth century, the scholars associated with it, their intellectual production, and the students who came from faraway lands to follow their classes. We know much less about the many other urban dwellers who were less educated, but who had access to certain forms of knowledge or literacy. The studies undertaken by James Heyworth-Dunne and Ahmad Izzat Abdul Karim in the s are still considered standard works on the history of education.1 Moreover, the focus on the educational reforms of the nineteenth century, when state schools were established, has tended to obscure conditions before that period. The reforms of this century were linked to a particular context, that of state construction, and they consequently had specific objectives. They answered the need to fill positions in a growing bureaucracy and to find personnel for various new state projects. The result was a school system with a standardized curriculum, offering certificates at the end of the study period that attested to the pupil’s level of attainment. The evaluation of what it meant to be educated or literate was based on well-studied standardized criteria. It was precisely these criteria, set in relation to the school system, that were used to evaluate the levels of literacy of the population as a whole. Thus, estimations of the level of literacy, both in reference to those who had not been part of the new school system and in relation to previous periods, before this school system was established, were very low. The Encyclopedia of Islam article on Muhammad Ali, for example, provides literacy figures for the first half of the nineteenth century. It states that this ruler’s reforms increased the rate of literacy from
— Nelly Hanna — per cent of the population in to per cent twenty years later, in . 2 The implication here is that the figure of per cent applies to the Ottoman period as a whole. In fact, most descriptions of ‘traditional’ education have tended to present an unchanging image that went far back in time, impervious to the conditions. Education could thus be understood in abstraction of those who undertook it, their needs or their constraints.3 This approach to literacy conformed to a modernization paradigm which linked education and literacy to the establishment of a modern state school system of education. It led to a clear-cut delineation of modern (after ) and traditional (before ). also often led tohomogeneous a consideration ofstatic the period , the focusdid of the presentItstudy, as a single, and block,before one that presumably not change between one region and another and was not particularly affected by either historical transformations or context. If one links the educational reforms of the nineteenth century to a particular context – in this case that of a ruler’s reforms and of state construction – one could also do the same with the earlier period. And, rather than understand the history of literacy and education in terms of before and after these reforms, we can historicize them and understand them in relation to a particular context which shaped the direction, the level, and the kind of literacy of particular periods. In other words, the history of literacy during the period to can be understood not as the period preceding Muhammad Ali’s reforms, but in its own terms. A reconsideration of literacy during the period to is particularly significant in view of the fact that some contemporary observers give a very different evaluation of conditions. The Englishman Edward Lane, who spent some ten years or so living in Egypt at the beginning of the nineteenth century, remarked that elementary schools (kuttab) were very numerous not only in Cairo but in every large town and in some villages, and that children from the higher and middle classes, and some even from the lower orders, were literate.4 Lane’s comments more or less conform to the estimations that were made by Chabrol, who accompanied Napoleon on the Expedition of and was among the team of experts who authored the Description de l’Égypte. He considered that about one-third of the population of Cairo was literate. 5 A similar result was reached on the basis of the number of elementary schools in the city and the average number of boys that these schools were teaching. 6 One must of course note, in relation to these figures, that they referred to the urban population of Cairo, and that they did not take into consideration either the other towns in the country or, more important, the rural population, which constituted the majority of the people of Egypt. The kuttab were fairly widespread in provincial and rural regions, but little is known of their numbers or of the way they functioned. andand literary evidence from the earlier period suggestsMany that ittradesmen was common forArchival tradesmen artisans in Cairo to obtain a basic education. and artisans considered it a father’s duty not only to pass on his trade to his son by teaching him at a fairly young age the details of the craft, but also to teach him to read and write (or to see that someone else did). This is the impression gained from a number of court cases. When, for instance, in a case from , the guardianship of a child of divorced parents was brought up, claims were made that ‘Hasan is eight years old, and he should go and live with his father, a sugar producer, who will teach him to read and write’.7 Likewise, we find literary texts that enjoin parents to pay attention to their
— Literacy among artisans and tradesmen — child’s education. Writing in the late seventeenth century, Yusuf al-Shirbini stated that a father should teach his son the essentials of religion, and then hand him over to a trustworthy teacher.8 Clearly, there are significant discrepancies between the figures estimated by modern historians and those offered by contemporary observers. This suggests that we need to reconsider and to redefine what literacy meant. 9 Generally speaking, scholars working on literacy in the early modern period, in Europe for example, are faced with this same issue. Some have opted for the idea of literacies (rather than literacy in the singular) to convey the plurality of forms that literacy could have. 10 This approach is useful for a number of reasons. One of these is that it shows that literacy varied according to the conditions that gave rise to it. It is also useful because it allows one to focus on social groups that are neither scholars nor learned men. Finally it is useful because it can encompass forms of literacy that do not require the ability to read. A study of medieval European literacy proposes to include those people who read by means of the ear, or who learnt by listening to others read.11 Thus, rather than working with absolute definitions of literacy that do not change over time, we could define literacy within the contours of a time period, on the understanding that it did not mean the same thing at all times, nor was it one and the same thing for all the elements of a given population. In fact, we need to see literacy as part of a social context that interacts with prevailing conditions. Certainly, this is not an easy task. But it seems best to search for answers by analysing conditions from the inside rather than from the outside by using models of another period. But what exactly this literacy implied during the period to is not easy to determine. One reason is that, whereas the modern school system tended to standardize education, this was clearly not the case previously. For instance, having terminated some years of study in a kuttab did not necessarily mean that pupils had attained the same level or studied the same way, as it would have in the modern state school system. The numerous waqf deeds pertaining to kuttabs in Cairo, for instance, specify the subjects that pupils were to be taught: in the school founded by Uthman Katkhuda al Qazdughli, boys were to learn to spell and to read the Koran;12 in the sabil-kuttab of Khalil Afandi Maqati‘ji, the waqf required that the boys be taught to read ( qira’a) and to behave properly ( adab),13 and in that of Yusuf Agha Qizlar they were to learn the Koran and read it every day.14 Hence, it would appear that some of these schools might emphasize one subject over another, although we still do not know enough about the way the curriculum was implemented or how strictly the provisions stated in the waqf deeds were followed to the letter. A useful indication on the subjects taught in some of these schools can be found in a fourteenth-century source by the scholar Ibn al-Hajj, who indicates that parents who wanted their children to know mathematics 15
or accounting themthe to level Coptic . should Generally however, the hisab) sentwith s were not(concerned thatkuttab a pupil havespeaking, reached on the termiwaqf nation of his studies, since exams were not part of the system. Moreover, the system of having a single classroom to teach all the boys in the school did not favour the idea of gradation in learning; nor does the system seem to have formulated clear expectations with regard to the level of learning that the boys should have acquired at the time that they finished their schooling. Although, basically, elementary education emphasized reading, writing and reciting the Koran, in all likelihood the various elementary schools were diverse in the level of
— Nelly Hanna —
Figure . The ‘Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda sabil-kuttab, Cairo, built c., a two-storey building with a large drinking fountain ( sabil) on the ground floor and an elementary school (kuttab) above. © Simon Monk.
achievements that boys attained. Some boys might end up, after four or five years in school, as half literate, trained in memorization of the Koran, but with limited abilities in relation to reading and/or writing. In a city like Cairo, where a dynamic trade and industry flourished, many of them might end up in the marketplace, owning a shop or practising a craft, and might need to make use of their education to read or write a receipt or record a deal. Yet others could be perfectly literate and have the ability both to read and write well. For fewer of these elementary school boys, schooling had prepared them to enter a college of higher education like the Azhar. To do so, their level of education would have had to be at a somewhat higher level. Such a situation might lead to a diverse situation with regard to literacy. In other words, one can trace among the artisan population different levels of literacy, possibly determined by specific constraints or needs, enough to allow them to conduct their work effectively and, of course, to fulfil their religious obligations. More broadly, these
— Literacy among artisans and tradesmen — needs were far from uniform among the various artisans. There might be different levels in the ability to read as well as different levels in the ability to write. Looking at literacy this way allows us to see it as a complex matter, one which could develop at several levels and for multiple reasons. The consideration of these variations in kinds and levels of literacy is also a way of getting around the dichotomies often used in literacy studies between the literate and the illiterate, between the educated and the uneducated, and between written and oral culture. One can observe the grey areas, or the area between literacy and illiteracy or between education and lack of it. One can thus give greater consideration to those who stood between these two, those people who, like many artisans and tradesmen, were neither fully literate nor fully illiterate; and, more significant, that much of what they learnt was not necessarily linked to institutions of education but might have been acquired through other informal channels. What this means is that, if one talks of the different varieties of literacy, one could do the same with illiteracy on the understanding that not all illiterates were at the same level or possessed the same kind of illiteracy. 16 Focusing on artisans and tradesmen – that is, market people (rather than on the scholars or ulama) – is a useful way of addressing these questions and of understanding literacy in its plurality of forms for two reasons. Firstly, artisans, craftsmen, tradesmen and shopkeepers represented a significant portion of the urban population of Cairo, possibly up to a third; consequently, the remarks that apply to them have a certain numerical weight. Secondly, they were a category of people outside educational and scholarly circles, but who nevertheless had access to a certain amount of education (as opposed to the poor in the city). By concentrating on these people one can observe the different meanings that literacy could have. Moreover, focusing on this group raises broader implications for society as a whole and for the relationship between education and society. In order to place the subject in a time frame, one can suggest some of the factors or the social forces that may have had an impact on artisan literacy. This allows us to historicize literacy, by placing it in a context and understanding it in a dynamic rather than in a static way. Generally speaking, elementary education, or the learning of the young, is associated with religious requirements. The association of religion and learning is true in many parts of the world, in medieval and early modern Europe as well as in the Arab and Ottoman world. The institutions of education of the period, whether at the primary or elementary level (the kuttab) or at the higher level of colleges for the study of religious sciences (madrasas), most of which were part of religious foundations, were linked to religious teaching, with the objective of teaching Muslim children the basics of the religion. Copts and Jews had their own schools for the same broad purpose.17 InDhakir theory, in these applied to both revealing. boys and girls. The comments of Hasan Abu thisobjectives context are nevertheless The memoirs he wrote in the eighteenth century show that he was clearly supportive of the education of women, but only up to a certain level. Abu Dhakir, in fact, considered that the husband should teach his wife how to read, but just enough for her to fulfil her basic religious obligations with regard to prayer, ablutions, and so on. Learning how to read would teach her the issues of concern to her in religious matters. Her education need go no further than that. Her husband should not teach her to write. Thus, for Abu Dhakir, there was a clear distinction between two very different processes. It was one thing to read and
— Nelly Hanna — another one to write. If the education of girls was more restricted than that received by boys, it was because they had less need for it. 18 Abu Dhakir probably thought that reading was enough for one’s religious education and that writing was probably more important to carry out one’s worldly affairs, which would explain why he limited a girl’s education to reading. Nevertheless, there are occasional references here and there to certain women who reached a higher level of education, who were able to recite the whole Koran, and who became professional shaykhas.19 But, surely, there were other factors than fulfilling religious obligations which could have an impact on the direction that the development of learning took, as well as other venues than that of the kuttab where artisans, shopkeepers and tradesmen could acquire certain forms of knowledge or learning. Such important phenomena as literacy and learning cannot be explained by a single factor. Moreover, the way that religious education was carried out, and the objectives of people who went through this education, also influenced the final result. It is by taking these variables into consideration that we can understand some of the variations between one region and another, or between urban and rural communities. The following discussion will therefore try to identify some of the factors that can help us to historicize literacy by a consideration of the direction it took and the people it involved. This can also shed light on how and why there was a high level of diversity of both literacy and illiteracy. It will do so by identifying a few factors to which the ‘middling sort’ were exposed during the period to and which might have shaped the kind and the level of learning among them. This approach emphasizes context as being a force in shaping the kind of learning that these people might acquire. For instance, rather than focusing entirely on the education that was provided by the kuttab or elementary schools, it looks at certain factors that could potentially affect the market people in Cairo, such as the development of popular sufism as a major social force as of the late fifteenth century, and one which had an educational dimension, and on the popularity of the coffee-house, a trend apparent as of the mid-sixteenth century, which encouraged the transmission of an oral literary culture that included story-telling and poetry. 20 This is not intended to undermine the importance of the kuttab, which no doubt played a major role in shaping the acquisition of learning among market people, but is rather an attempt to take into consideration informal forms of transmission and to historicize this learning process instead of treating it in an ahistorical way. This approach can provide a richer understanding of the situation, one that allows us to see a certain complexity of educational make-up of Cairo’s market people during the period covered.
SUFISM AND LITERACY The first of these factors is the emergence of popular sufism at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries and its subsequent spread among the urban population. Scholarly work, such as that by Leonor Fernandes, has demonstrated that the elite sufi institutions of the Mamluk period, which in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries centred around the state-sponsored sufi institution ( khanqa), gave way to a more popular sufism which reached various strata of the population through small, less formal institutions ( zawias) created around individual sufi shaykhs.21 This trend underwent a significant development in the sixteenth century, as
— Literacy among artisans and tradesmen — many of these shaykhs gathered around them numerous adherents, including many tradesmen, craftsmen and shopkeepers. In short, sufism acquired a numerous popular following among the urban population. Its leadership came from below, from lower class or rural people, some of them with little or no education.22 Many were themselves artisans and traders, such as weavers and sellers of oil. Their zawias tended to be located in the outskirts, where artisanal activities were often located. Jean-Claude Garcin has shown their preference for the outer districts of the city, as opposed to the centrally located Azhar, since many of these sufis were of rural srcin and often kept their links to their villages in the Delta. 23 Although sufis are sometimes said to have been averse to learning, this was not necessarily true of all sufis. In fact, scholars working on the sixteenth century are finding that there was an important trend in many of these zawias to have a teaching function. Tawfiq al-Tawil notes that the zawia of Abdul Wahab al-Sharani (d. ), which was one of the most important, had about two hundred residents, ordinary people who came to live there with their families, in addition to numerous individuals, many of whom were artisans and tradesmen, coming to visit it daily. Its founder, al-Sharani, was one of the most famous sixteenth-century sufis in Egypt, and he had an important following of friends and disciples. In the zawia that he established he had stipulated that the sufis should read the Koran and Hadith night and day continuously. 24 This seems to have been a pattern among other institutions. Hence, a recent study of sufism in Ottoman Egypt undertaken by Muhammad Sabri Yusuf shows that, in many of these zawias, lessons were given to their adherents.25 One would imagine that, since such lessons were for laymen rather than for scholars, their content would be somewhat different from those lessons in institutions of higher education aimed at forming would-be scholars. But, like the lessons in these institutions, much of the learning process depended on oral transmission, perhaps even more so, since many of the people who attended the lessons in zawias were not necessarily students who devoted their lives to scholarship and learning, but presumably ordinary people who had a trading or productive activity, and either resided in the zawia or visited it on occasions for a spiritual or religious purpose.26 Since many of the adherents and the visitors were tradesmen and artisans, they might well have gone through the kuttab system and had some basic education already. Their presence in the zawia added a further dimension to the education they may have already had. This situation raises the issue of how we should consider the category of illiterates – that is, those people who could neither read nor write but who were exposed to this alternative type of learning in a zawia. Here they attended sessions, they had teachers, and they were introduced to a certain type of knowledge. This learning may not have required books or the ability to read, relying instead on oral transmission. There may have been discussions of particular topics. Inbeing short,put these people exposed to some kind of knowledge without its necessarily down on were paper. The question that arises therefore is whether we consider them literate or illiterate. A recent study on this subject has suggested a way to answer this question. Marc Aymes has coined a term to describe this situation – namely, ‘ill-literate knowledge’ – which seems to be very appropriate, because it allows us to distinguish between those who could acquire knowledge without having the ability to read or write and those who did have this ability, or between the illiterate person who had no exposure to oral transmission and the illiterate person who had the possibility of a kind of education attained orally rather
— Nelly Hanna — than in writing. The implication here is that the inability to use the written word should not be considered as equivalent to ignorance, that certain forms of knowledge could be acquired independently of the written word, and that an illiterate person who could neither read nor write could attain a degree or a kind of education through oral means. This category of knowledge, which today is not given much credibility, seems to have been more widely accepted and respected in the sixteenth century, probably because of the existence of multiple channels for oral transmission. In fact, the sufi shaykhs themselves were sometimes illiterate. Al-Sharani’s own master, and a very prominent sufi shaykh, Ali al-Khawas, was one of these. He could neither read nor write and had had no formal education, yet he had learnt quite a lot by attending sessions offered here and there. 27 He became knowledgeable in a number of subjects, including medicine, and issued fatwas, so much so that his disciple alSharani put down his words in writing for others to learn from him. Therefore there were several shades and degrees even among these ‘illiterates’. It is precisely these thin lines between the various levels and types of learning that allow us to understand not only the complexity of the situation of literacy in the sixteenth century but also how conditions evolved in the nineteenth century. Thus, zawias contributed to literacy on several levels, and in increasing proportions as popular sufism itself developed in the sixteenth century, reaching large portions of the urban population by the eighteenth century. The role of these zawias was multiple. Some provided an education of sorts, and there were some where libraries could be found, so that the sufi disciple had access to books and the written word. Al-Sharani’s zawia was one of those with its own library, while in the zawia of Qadi Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Nubi there were enough books to justify appointing a librarian.28 An artisan or craftsman could take up permanent residence in al-Sharani’s zawia with his family or go there on an occasional basis. He could attend the lessons that the shaykh gave, use books from the library, or just listen to the discussions of the other adherents of the zawia.
COFFEEHOUSE LITERACY A similar kind of oral literacy, based on hearing and listening rather than on reading and writing, can also be linked to the development of the coffee-house. The coffeehouse was a phenomenon emerging in the sixteenth century which eventually expanded enormously, such that a couple of centuries later most districts in the city had them. The English traveller Edward Lane counted a thousand coffee-houses in Cairo at the beginning of the nineteenth century.29 Our sources do not tell us who frequented these coffee-houses. Yet, by a process of exclusion, one could morebe important clientsthat, werebythe men, shopkeepers andpresume artisans that of theamong city. Ititswould safe to assume andtradeslarge, the poor of the city did not patronize them, and that the military ruling class, if they did, would not have represented the majority of their clients. The coffee-house offered different kinds of entertainment to its clients. There were dancers, singers, monkey-owners, acrobats, magicians, and so on. But there were also other forms of entertainment that were more literary in taste: musicians, story-tellers and poets, and various kinds of literary diversions. It is at this level that the clients of the coffee-house could be exposed to an oral literary culture. The siras (romances) of
— Literacy among artisans and tradesmen — Abu Zayd al-Hilali, of Antar and of al-Dhahir Baybars were commonly recited to audiences, many of whom would be familiar with these narratives. 30 They were narrated in colloquial Arabic, making them accessible to large audiences. 31 Poets also used the coffee-house as a venue to recite or improvise their verse against a small payment made by the listeners. Whether the clients of the coffee-house were literate, semi-literate or even illiterate, exposure to this oral literature constituted another form of knowledge that could be acquired both by those who could and those who could not read.
LITERACY AND THE MARKET
The kind and the level of literacy or learning among artisans, craftsmen and shopkeepers may also have been affected by another factor, notably by a legal culture which encouraged them to make use of the written word for their various dealings with each other. It would seem that, the more active a market, the more multiple deals and transactions were undertaken, and the more these were likely to be put down on paper. In the s, a lucrative and dynamic economy can be surmised from the numerous and diverse economic activities that our sources portray, not only among merchants but also among artisans and tradesmen. Seventeenth-century court records show the ample use made of written deeds, often in relation to ordinary daily activities. For example, many of the transactions that were undertaken in the marketplace involved credit, whereby a tradesman or craftsman took the merchandise and paid for it at a subsequent date. Even when the sums involved were small or modest, the transaction was registered in court in order to have a written record of the money owed. Such transactions occur very frequently in the registers, involving both well-to-do and less well-to-do artisans. Such court records shed light on two aspects of literacy. Firstly, they show that tradesmen and artisans made regular use of the courts for the daily affairs related to their work. Secondly, they contain useful references both to the reasons why it was important to such men to have deeds in their hands and to the uses they made of the written word. There were in fact several aspects of an artisan’s activities that seem to have regularly required recording on paper, both at the individual level and at the level of artisan guilds. The recording of sale of goods on credit has already been mentioned. In case of dispute, a plaintiff could, against the payment of a sum of money to the court, obtain copies of the deed recorded in the register. From these court records, we also learn that some artisans and craftsmen kept registers (daftar) in their place of work. This suggests that, for some, recording in writing such workplace activities such as the purchase or delivery of raw materials was part of the routine of business. It was probably true especially in those crafts of some scope – thatasis,oilthose thatorrequired fairly large equipment or that several such presses sugar refineries. Although registers of employed this kind have notpeople, come down to us, such references to them in court cases prove their existence. One of these cases refers to an agreement made by a person in Cairo with an inhabitant of a village in the Delta, whereby the former provides the latter with a sum of money in return for weaving him a textile. The agreement was noted as having been recorded in a daftar.32 Presumably this kind of activity was regularly undertaken. References to the records and deeds kept by artisans can also be found in relation to guild matters. The guild was in principle responsible for collecting taxes from its
— Nelly Hanna — members. It also distributed raw material among artisans. For some guilds, the court cases provide references to activities that were recorded on paper. When, for instance, the raw material was divided among members of the guild of sesame oil pressers, the guild head had one copy and the members another copy of the list of members who received their share in sesame seeds. Thus recording things on paper was part of the routine. Other occasions could necessitate putting guild affairs on paper. In the s, the guild of cotton makers/sellers (taifa al qattanin) had a guild waqf, and a shaykh was made responsible for keeping its written records in order and up to date. 33 Such court cases are not direct evidence of literacy. Was this shaykh doing the job because no member of the cotton-makers’ guild could write or make the necessary calculations of expenditures and revenues? However, these case references do indicate that artisans in their daily life had a need for writing on paper and that it was useful to be able to decipher the meaning of the deed that one kept.
DOCUMENTS AS A FORM OF LEGAL PROTECTION Expansion of the functions of the judicial court is a feature of the Ottoman sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It occurred at about the time that the empire was developing its great bureaucratic tradition, the judiciary being a part of this development. Documents have long been important in Islamic societies, a fact that is easily attested by the numerous collections that have survived in many parts of the world. Further, one could argue that there was a link between literacy in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and the emergence of what one could call a legalistic culture. This is not the legalistic culture of those persons whose profession was associated with the judiciary or who had spent years studying the law in books of jurisprudence, but a legalistic culture of those who were at the receiving end of the judiciary institution, or its clients, who had no legal education but for whom the judiciary performed an important social function in many aspects of their lives. The development of this legalistic culture was due partly to the expansion of the court system in the Ottoman state and partly to the great weight that the state placed upon it. In Cairo, during the years that followed the Ottoman invasion of , a number of courtrooms were set up in the different parts of the city where qadis held their sessions; previously a qadi could hold his sessions at a mosque of his choice rather than in a fixed location. Court registers were kept, and the cases brought to the attention of the qadi were recorded regularly in these registers. Thousands of such registers are extant for many towns and cities in all parts of the Ottoman empire.34 They attest to a broad social spectrum of the population that made use of this institution – merchants, officials, mamluks, as well as tradesmen, artisans and shopkeepers; persons of urban as of well as ruralwith srcin; men itand women; Muslims and non-Muslims and to the breadth subjects which dealt – business transactions, property –transactions, matters related to personal status, partnerships, and disputes of all kinds. One aspect is of particular significance in relation to the subject of literacy and learning, namely the fact that written documents could be used as evidence in court. In fact, the courts, rather than relying fully on the oral testimony of witnesses, also often allowed written documents to be used. 35 This was an incentive for individuals or families to take care of relevant documents in order to safeguard their interests, whether in regard to a property or a business transaction. Many ordinary people
— Literacy among artisans and tradesmen — were home-owners, and the qadi registers are filled with transactions concerning these houses as they passed from hand to hand or following the death of one of the owners and the purchase of his share by third parties.36 When a person sold his house, he had to prove his ownership in front of the qadi, whether he had purchased or had inherited it. These were additional incentives for owners to keep their property documents safely and to be able to decipher their content when necessary. In the court registers, there are more deeds dealing in property transaction than in most other subjects. The responsibilities and the competences of the courts and the qadis were, moreover, also expanded. For the first time, for instance, a sixteenth-century sultanic law required that people register their marriage contracts in the court, even though Islamic law recognizes oral contracts as long as there are witnesses and consequently written contracts were not a religious requirement. Nevertheless, the grand mufti in Istanbul, Ebussuud (in office –), justified this sultanic decision on the basis of the fact that a written contract could be used as evidence in case of dispute, and that the registration of such marriage contracts might help prevent irregular or illicit unions. 37 The extent to which this ruling was applied on the ground varied from place to place. In Cairo, the court registers contain thousands of these marriage contracts as of the midsixteenth century. In other parts of Egypt this was not the case, and people continued to get married without registering their contracts in front of the qadi. Nicolas Michel’s work on the court registers of the town of Isna in Upper Egypt, for instance, clearly indicates that, until the second half of the eighteenth century, there were hardly any marriage contracts registered.38 It would seem that regions which were far from the centres of power might be less likely to follow state rulings to the letter. Certainly, the need to protect and safeguard one’s interests was, for some people, an incentive to acquire a certain level of literacy. Once one had a number of documents in one’s possession – a marriage contract, a property deed for one’s house, a business partnership with a colleague – it became imperative to have, as a basic minimum, the ability to decipher the meaning of the document and to read the names inscribed in it. A court case from shows the importance of such legal deeds as recognized among artisan families. The case concerns the inheritance of Suliman Da’bus, presser of linseed oil, and the subsequent litigation between his son Yusuf, also an oil-presser, and his daughter Amna over inheritance rights. The striking fact about the case was that the conflict between brother and sister focused not only on the inheritance itself but on the deeds and documents that their father had left behind. Amna accused her brother of hiding their deceased father’s deeds. She knew of their existence and she also knew where her father had kept them, namely in a metal coffer and in a wooden box. She wanted the qadi to rule in her favour to have her brother hand them over. Yusuf 39 admitted that wereinheritance. in his possession but added that Amna received all her rights from thethey father’s The implication of this casehad is that the deceased oil-presser had among his deeds the record of his economic activity, and that the deeds provided an essential protection against false claims to the person who held them. Further, it would seem that it was usual practice to keep such deeds, or copies of the deeds recorded in court, in one’s home. The case of the Abu Da’bus family confirms the impression one gets from reading court cases, namely that keeping one’s documents was a way of protecting one’s rights. It did not necessarily mean that the persons who had them could read them in their entirety. Some people may have had this ability,
— Nelly Hanna — while others may have ‘deciphered’ the contents or may have been able to read a few words – enough to distinguish between a marriage contract and the deeds for the sale of a house; still others could need to resort to another person to do the reading for them. It was, however, an incentive to do so to safeguard one’s interests.
CONCLUSION Thes different factors affecting artisan literacy (or illiteracy) proposed here overlap one with another. An artisan or tradesman could be exposed to one of these levels or to all of them. He might have attended an elementary school and learnt basic reading and writing; he would then work in the marketplace, where deeds and documents were used as current practice, so he would have to read or decipher their essential content. He might spend leisure time in the coffee-house and follow the story-teller as he narrated the adventures of Antar or Baybars, and he might spend time in a zawia, where he could listen to religious teachings and possibly have access to books. In different combinations, and different degrees of exposure, all these, whether based on the written word or part of an oral tradition of transmission, could have a potential impact on the kind and level of literacy. Taking all these diverse factors into consideration can help us to understand the diversity of level and of kind of literacy among artisans. They are also indications of the specificity of a big city which had a large population of tradesmen and craftsmen and which offered diverse venues where they could be exposed to institutional and non-institutional learning, to formal and informal forms of communication, and to oral and written culture. Consequently, conditions for artisans and craftsmen in Cairo were not the same as conditions in Upper Egyptian towns – smaller, less cosmopolitan and having less access to wealth. If we see literacy in terms of this flexible model, which leaves room for a number of levels and types, we get a different type of history of literacy, covering a much wider spectrum of possibilities between people who were highly educated and those who were illiterate – in other words, the grey areas between the two had numerous shades. This approach to the study of literacy is fundamentally different from the one that links literacy to nineteenth-century state institutions of education and considers that the modern school system spread literacy among a population for the most part illiterate. The discrepancies between the various estimations of literacy referred to earlier in this essay come from the way that we understand and define literacy. In short, before the establishment of a state school system, which tried to set certain criteria to be followed in all schools and had as an objective the standardization of content and the levels of learning, the definition of learning and literacy was diverse and the standards that were followed had little uniformity. It is precisely this diversity that was at the core of artisan literacy.
NOTES Heyworth-Dunne ; Ahmad Izzat Abdul Karim . Toledano : . An example of this approach can be found in Faksh . Lane : –. Chabrol : –.
— Literacy among artisans and tradesmen —
Hanna : –. Dar al-Wathaiq al-Qawmiya, Cairo, Court of Bab Ali, register , case , dated /: . Yusuf al-Shirbini, ‘Kitab tarh al-madad li-hall al ‘ala’ wal-durar’, Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya, Majami‘ Tal‘at, Ms no. , copy dated /: –. These issues are discussed in Hanna : –. Collins . Glenn : . Ministry of Waqf, Cairo, no. : Waqf of Uthman Katkhuda al-Qazdughli, dated /: –. Court of Bab Ali, register ,: caseWaqf ,ofdated –. Ministry of Waqf, Cairo, no. Yusuf/: Agha Qizlar, dated /: . Ibn al-Hajj : . On the subject of illiteracy, see Aymes . For instance, a Coptic kuttab in Khukhat al-Awuz, and a Jewish rabbinate one in Atfat alYahud al-Rabbaniyin: see Court of Bab Ali, register , case , dated /: ; case , dated /: . Muhammad Hasan Abu Dhakir, untitled MS, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, fonds arabe : fol. a. Heyworth-Dunne : . Ibid.: –. Fernandes : –. Sabra : –. Garcin : –. Tawfiq al-Tawil : –. Muhammad Sabri Yusuf : . Hanna : –. Sabra . Winter : –; Court of Bab Ali, register , case , dated /: . Lane : . Ibid.: –. Heyworth-Dunne : . Dar al-Wathaiq al-Qawmiya, Cairo, Court of Bab Sharia, register , case , dated /: . Court of Bab Sharia, register , case , dated /: . Hanna . Ergene : –. Hanna : . Imber a: . Michel : . Dar al-Wathaiq al-Qawmiya, Cairo, Qisma Arabiya , case , dated /: .
CHAPTER TWENTYTHREE
‘GUIDED BY THE ALMIGHTY’ The journey of Stephan Schultz in the Ottoman empire, –
Jan Schmidt
E
uropean travel writing on the Ottoman empire in the pre-modern era is a voluminous and fascinating genre, especially for readers who like so-called ego documents.1 Apart from the experiences of the travellers themselves, a broad but limited range of subjects is discussed in these books. Only a minority of authors went beyond the parameters set by the existing literature and refrained from copying passages from previous works or commenting on them. Thus, many writers discuss the inconveniences of travel; the ancient, especially classical, past of the area; the beauty and monuments of Istanbul; the customs and religion of the Turks (as non-Arab Ottoman Muslims were invariably termed); the treatment of women; and the state of the eastern churches. Only a few authors wrote about more abstract subjects like Ottoman politics or belles lettres. Many of these travel books are, at least in part, pleasant to read; the best are, even today, able to produce something close to the ‘historical sensation’ as first defined by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga. Apart from their entertainment value, some are also valuable historical sources, especially if they reveal aspects of daily life and culture in the Ottoman empire not easily found in native sources – often controvers ial activities such as wine-drinking, drug consumption and paedophilia. The Ottomans did write on these things, but in a different and often more enigmatic way – enigmatic for us, that is – than European observers, who could be more matter-of-fact, if not unbiased. Occasionally we even hear the voices of Ottoman men, rarely also Ottoman women (exceptionally in the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu), if travellers met them in the privacy of their homes and bothered to record their conversation. Among the many travel books published in Europe before , I will examine here one which stands out fromtothe texts. Firstly, the author, Stephan Schultz, does his utmost relyaverage, on his less ownsrcinal experiences rather than what he read in the books of his predecessors. Secondly, it is exceptional in that the author was fluent in many languages and held weighty conversations with both indigenous Europeans (‘Franks’) and Ottomans in their own tongue, jotting down the results for inclusion in his book. If conversations are described at all by travel writers, they are often limited to trivialities or, often insipid, anecdotes. Many western travellers spoke little other than their mother tongue and Latin (if they had received a higher education), let alone Arabic or Turkish, were dependent on interpreters, or were not really interested in
— The journey of Stephan Schultz in the Ottoman empire —
what the locals had to say. Schultz’s scholarly and, particularly, philological proclivities ensured that he was, exceptionally, interested in linguistics and Ottoman literary culture. His book contains several passages in which he discusses local languages, script and writing, manuscripts and printed books. An autograph of Schultz’s travel book exists among the Turkish manuscripts in Leiden University Library.2 Its German title, Der Leitungen des Höchsten nach seinem Rath auf den Reisen durch Europa, Asia und Africa, translates as ‘In the Guidance of the Highest according to His Counsel on Travels through Europe, Asia and Africa’.3 The book, published in Halle, Germany, in five volumes between and , combines autobiography and a4 chronological descriptioninofEurope Schultz’sas journeys in Europe and the Ottoman empire. He travelled extensively an emissary of the Institutum Judaicum et Muhammedicum in Halle (Brandenburg, Prussia) and in the Ottoman empire during the years to . The institute in Halle had been founded in for the purpose not so much of trying to convert as of bearing witness of the truth of pietistic Evangelism to the heathen, Jews in particular. Candidates for this treatment were personally approached by the missionaries, who supported their arguments by distributing pious tracts in various languages, including Greek, Syriac, Hebrew, Arabic and Turkish, which had been privately printed by the institute. 5 THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORK
Schultz, born in in the small village of Flatow in Pomerania (now Złotów in Poland), the son of a shoemaker, showed a keen interest in learning and, thanks to beneficent patronage, was able to study theology at the University of Königsberg in east Prussia. He was a born linguist and learned all kinds of languages, among them Hebrew, Illyrian, Syriac, Arabic and Turkish, all of which helped him to communicate with the people of the lands through which he passed and to impress them with his learning. In Schultz embarked on his first trial mission for the Halle institute in east Prussia, and from onwards was more or less continuously en route in Europe and the Ottoman empire. In , he befriended Albrecht Friedrich Woltersdorf, then a student of theology at Berlin and, like Schultz, a keen linguist; Woltersdorf henceforth accompanied him on his travels. Upon his return from the Ottoman empire in , Schultz settled in Halle, preached and taught Arabic, Hebrew and a course entitled ‘Antijudaicum’ at the institute.6 He was appointed director in , married in and died in , having completed his travel book and seen it through the press. Missionary activities among the Jews had by then petered out, and the institute closed its doors in . There is no proof, at least as far as the writings of Schultz are concerned, that the missionary work had much success. Our friends were not, it 7
seems, any ofshows their ainterlocutors The able text to of persuade Der Leitungen broad rangetoofchange interest.faith. Schultz, theologian and amateur Orientalist, botanist and pharmacologist, wrote in a matter-of-fact style during an epoch in which the expression of romantic sentiment had not yet become fashionable. Apart from an emphasis on conversation with both local ‘Franks’, lay and ecclesiastic, and ‘Orientals’ of all denominations, his work is dotted with learned asides on all kinds of curious topics and theories. The text is devoid of the clichéd prejudices against foreign ‘races’ and cultures that often mar other travel writing, particularly in the nineteenth century. There is hardly any mention of ‘lazy Turks’, devious
— Jan Schmidt —
Levantines or swindling Jews; Muslim merchants are, by contrast, praised for their honesty.8 Even a brief description of the imperial harem is free of the usual Western sensational fantasies: the ladies in the harem were spouses of the sultan, court servants or girls of noble descent waiting to be married to Ottoman pashas; in any case, added Schultz, monogamy was the rule among Muslims.9 Nevertheless, the author was not uncritical and vented his indignation in several passages when reporting stories of the cruel behaviour of Ottoman officials. He also deplored the widespread ignorance and the backwardness of Ottoman learning. JO URNEYING IN THE OTTOM AN EM PIRE
Like all pre-modern travellers, Schultz and Woltersdorf journeyed with a huge amount of luggage, which included bedding, food, cooking utensils, fuel, medicaments and books, principally the Bible in its srcinal languages (Hebrew and Greek), plus a selection of pious tracts for distribution among the heathen. Before they left, they made great efforts to prepare themselves spiritually for the journey and spent much time improving their linguistic skills. This effort continued during their journey through conversation, perusing grammars and dictionaries, and employing language teachers. Thus, for instance, in Istanbul they hired a teacher, probably the Armenian Isaac Hoca (interviewed for the job on January ), for daily lessons, for which they paid piastres.10 Part of the programme was practising conversation in Arabic, Turkish and Armenian.11 Schultz could speak Hebrew reasonably well after a while, whereas Woltersdorf became proficient in Turkish. Often, however, they had to fall back on Italian or use an interpreter. Arabic proved especially difficult to master. Being almost penniless, Schultz and his companion – who were sometimes mistaken for beggars – could ill afford to stay in public inns and depended to a great extent on the charity of diplomats and Christian institutions such as monasteries, or, if necessary, on their camping equipment. They were often made welcome in the houses of consuls or other diplomatic personnel or lodged with friends – pastors, merchants, artisans and others – often for days, if not weeks or months on end. Schultz, being Protestant, was mostly patronized by fellow Protestants such as the British, Dutch and Swedes, as Prussians at that time had no diplomatic representation in the Ottoman empire. Although most European travellers made use of the network of embassies and consulates that had developed in the Ottoman empire since the late sixteenth century, Schultz devoted more space to describing these men, their families, houses, pastimes and conversation, than appears in other travel books. His work is therefore also a rich source for data on the European diplomatic network in the empire in the mid-eighteenth century. In what follows, I will highlight some particular features of the book, including meetings with Ottomans,and Muslims and Jews, and for thewine. (to many travellers) striking phenomena of paedophilia the Muslim fondness All translations are my own. Schultz’s and Woltersdorf’s journey went roughly as follows. Having left Halle in May , they travelled via Vienna and Trieste, arriving by ship in Izmir on November. From there, they journeyed to Istanbul, back to Izmir, on to Alexandria, Cairo, Rosetta, Damietta, Cyprus, Alexandretta (İskenderun), Aleppo, Latakya and St Jean d’Acre (Akko). From Jerusalem, Schultz then made several trips alone in Palestine. Woltersdorf remained in Acre because of a lethal infection in one of his legs, and
— The journey of Stephan Schultz in the Ottoman empire —
died there during the night of – August . On August Schultz left Acre for Beirut and Damascus, went from there back to Beirut and on to Tripoli, toured the Lebanese mountains, and returned to Acre, from where he sailed to Cyprus and Izmir. On March Schultz finally boarded ship for Trieste and from there travelled home overland. ISTANBUL AND THE SULTAN
Among the more attractive parts of Der Leitungen are Schultz’s descriptions of Istanbul. Many travel books describe the city and its monuments, but his dry style and wry observations are unusual. One of the attractions of the Ottoman capital was the sultan. On January , Schultz and Woltersdorf went into the city on the occasion of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. Because today happened to be the birthday of Muhammad, which the Turks call Mevlud, yesterday evening the towers of all mosques had already been illuminated with many thousands of lamps, and because the emperor [Mahmud I, –] visits a mosque on that day in greater pomp than normally, the Dutch ambassador had arranged an escort into town for us, so that we could see the procession. We were ready early, the Janissary and the dragoman [interpreter] were also ready, only the merchant, Mr. Oudermeulen,12 was so slow in coming that upon our arrival in the city, the emperor’s procession had already passed. Nonetheless we went to see the church of St Sophia from the outside, which surely competes for precedence with St Peter’s in Rome. . . . When we went home again, we had to pass through a huge crowd of people. Because we were still dressed in German clothes, and many of the inhabitants of the city of Constantinople proper were unacquainted with these, many of them stood still and looked at us as if we were some freaks of nature. . . . We did not suffer from any mischief, apart from the fact that an unruly boy wanted to knock off Mr. Woltersdorf’s hat, that another poked his fist in front of Mr. Oudermeulen’s breast, and that I stood in the way of another Turk because I was looking round at someone. He wished to walk around me, put his hand in a friendly way on my shoulder, and beckoned to me to let him pass, from all of which I witnessed the variation in mood on such serious occasions: ferocious, innocent and well-behaved. The ferocious, I hold to be Greeks who converted to the Muhammadan religion . . . . 13 The travellers were able to see the sultan on another occasion. Early on from February the Dutch sent aindragoman, Mr. us Gabriel, a Janissary his palace to ourambassador quarters, partly order to lead aroundand in the town of Constantinople, partly also in order to direct us to a place where we would be able to see the Grand Signor riding to a mosque; our host, Mr. Marchand [a jeweller from Geneva], accompanied us. Thus we went through Pera and Galata to the waterfront, went by Balık Pazarı [the fish market], passing through a long street of arches where all kinds of spices were being sold. Next through a street where the comb-makers have their habitations and shops. They make the combs of box-wood and they are as strong and good as those made from elephant
— Jan Schmidt —
teeth. Further on we passed through a street of spoon-makers, then one of ironmongers, and so on to the Bezestan where we inspected the fur, leather, cloth, linen and papuşi [shoe, slipper] shops. All the aforementioned shops or arches are unusually full of goods and there are so many of them that they form complete streets. Finally we arrived at a pharmacy by which the Grand Signor had to ride on his way to the mosque at St. Job [Eyüb] and where we could see everything. . . . Because we wanted to enter into the aforementioned pharmacy, we had to cross the same street where the Janissaries had been lined up; on each side of the street there were three rows [of them]; all of them made room for us with great polite14
ness, so that we could pass through them. Here Schultz indulges in a detailed description of the units that took part in the procession. The sultan was preceded by twelve kapıcıs (palace doorkeepers) and surrounded by twenty-four hayduts (Heyducken, footmen in Hungarian costume), who led his horse on two sides. Among these gentlemen-at-arms the Grand Signor rode as if in the clouds, so that one could hardly see him. But because we were standing on a somewhat elevated spot, we saw him perfectly. He was dressed simply; one did not see jewels on his turban. The biniş or upper garment was a fine violet cloth; the horse was caparisoned with a chabraque [saddlecloth] which reached down to its ankles and was estimated at thousand piastres because of its pearls and jewels. . . . When the emperor passed us on his way to the mosque, and beat his breast now on the left then on the right side, he focused his gaze on us because we were dressed in black; on his way back, certainly twenty steps ahead of us, he turned his face to15us with some sort of melancholy [expression]; we did not know what this meant. A çorbacı (colonel of the janissaries) later explained to them that black for the Ottomans meant mourning (and was not associated with the uniform of clergymen) and that the sultan must have expressed his pity. The travellers got another glimpse of Mahmud I on March, when they accompanied the Russian ambassador, Von Obreskov,16 to the palace. Before we entered [the divan, council chamber], we saw the Janissaries busy eating; their plates topped up with half-cooked peas were put on the grass [of the second inner court]. The Janissaries were standing at a distance, lying in wait, like a cat for a mouse, until they would be beckoned, when each of them, wanting to be first, rushed forward so that quite a few of them spilled half of the little food 17
[they got]. This was the first glorious thing that we saw today. Having entered the divan, they saw the grand vezir, dressed in a black fox-skin, with a towering white turban on his head adorned with a gold sash. He was seated on a sofa, with on his left the two kazaskers (chief military judges) of Rumeli and Anatolia, who were flanked by other dignitaries. The ambassador was sitting in an armchair on the right-hand side. Above the grand vezir was the lattice window, behind which the sultan could be concealed if he wished to listen to the deliberations. (Schultz occasionally threw stealthy glances at the window – watching openly was strictly
— The journey of Stephan Schultz in the Ottoman empire —
prohibited – and saw that the sultan sometimes peeped through the latticework; it was the same man they had seen from the pharmacy.) The room itself was square and topped by a cupola. In the centre was suspended a bird-cage, in and out of which flew a pigeon. After we had entered this glorious hall, in many places sparkling with cobwebs, its walls adorned with dust, first the trial was held, after which so much fuss was made of the cash payment of the Janissaries, that time began to hang heavy on my hand.18 Thereupon the banquet started. The Ottoman dignitaries and the ambassador had their own private tables, while the other guests sat down at larger dressed ones. Food was brought in, first a plate for the grand vezir and another for the ambassador. There followed another for each; but the courses passed by quickly, and Schultz observed that the meal did not take more than fifteen to twenty minutes in all. What was left of the food first offered to the grand vezir and the ambassador was subsequently distributed among the officials of lower rank and the ambassador’s retinue. Although Schultz and Woltersdorf were asked to join in, they refused. Schultz had seen that meat which had fallen from the dishes carried in by pages was picked up from the floor and put back on the dishes. Another deterrent was the fact that these dishes were covered with leather (instead of the expected metal) tops that looked extremely dirty. The distance between the kitchen and the hall was, moreover, at least steps, and the food must have been quite cold when eaten. Schultz observed that the grand vezir did not use a spoon or a knife, but his hands, and that a special page handed him a napkin after each dish to wipe his hands (so that, in all, napkins were used). No wine, water or sherbet was served. Schultz considered the banquet a ‘fake meal’ ( ScheinMahlzeit), particularly because the whole affair lasted such a short time. After the banquet, the ambassador and his retinue were required to leave the hall. In the courtyard, the ambassador was clothed in a sable fur, while members of his retinue received caftans. Soon thereafter the audience began, with the ambassador and a limited number of his staff being conducted to the audience room by çavuşes (halberdiers). They remained in the sultan’s presence for about ten minutes. Afterwards, Schultz and Woltersdorf accompanied the ambassador to the Russian embassy, where they ‘enjoyed a satisfactory meal’.19 Schultz reflected on what he had observed: Because the divan is held almost as sacrosanct as a mosque, and because the Turks are not allowed to kill vermin like lice, fleas, spiders etc. perhaps because of their holiness, and other but little-visited dwellings, including also the , aremosques consequently full official of cobwebs, like our cowsheds. More than once divanthe have I seen that when a Turk had grabbed a flea from his breast he did not crush it as we are used to do, but, politely, let it jump to the ground.20 Schultz, as always the matter-of-fact northern Protestant, was not much impressed by the palace – his opinion was shared by many travellers – which he compared to a hospital, big and spread out in all directions. 21
— Jan Schmidt —
ORIENTAL CLOTHES
During their sojourn in Izmir in the spring and early summer of , our travellers ordered Oriental (‘Levantine’) clothes for themselves from a local tailor, without which they could not easily continue. Wearing local dress for safety reasons was common among foreign travellers; Schultz was exceptional in the thoroughness with which he described his attire. The clothes, he wrote, consisted of seven parts: [] çuhacır [çakşır],22 wide pants or trousers, of red scarlet-cloth, lined with cotton or cotton stuff, which is not buttoned up over the hips but fastened with a band which can be taken in and out. Down at the ankle, mestfes23 are sewn on; these are [made] of yellow, red, violet or black morocco-leather and serve at the same time as socks with which one slips into the pabuç [slipper] or çizme [boot]. [] The subun24 is similar to our dressing-gown but reaches only as far as the knees, is of half silk or pure silk atlas, with so-called Polish narrow sleeves, also lined with cotton. Furthermore there is [] the caftan, also of half or pure silk fabric, but, except for the sleeves, unlined; it reaches beyond the ankles and is kept together with a silk girdle like a sash. In this way one is girded up. [] Over the caftan one puts the cübbe.25 This is either sleeveless or has only half sleeves; the material of which it is made is cloth or camel hair lined with silk; in winter one lines this garment with fox or other furs. [] On top of all of these one puts the biniş,26 which consists of unlined, fine English, Dutch or French cloth. [] The head is covered by either a dülbend [turban] or a kalpak [fur cap]. Now one is dressed and is able to visit anyone, or go to dinner. [] If it rains, one puts over the aforementioned 27
clothes a yağmurluk [raincoat], and on one’s cover which one puts the turban or the kalpak and wraps a couple of head times aaround one’s neck. Afterover we had put on everything item by item it must have been to us what it was to little David who had to lay on King Saul’s coat of mail, shield and helmet to fight the giant Goliath. But in a few days we became as used to these oriental clothes as if we had been wearing them since our youth. 28 Schultz adds that the quality of their clothes was average: neither poor nor veryrich – they lacked, for instance, incense and pure silk. Nevertheless, they had cost more than piastres ( ducats). If a man wanted toown a full suit of summer and winter clothes, it would cost him as much as to , and for a woman even up to , piastres. CONVERSATION ON BOARD SHIP
On June, the travellers boarded the ship La Colomba under captain Fugazzo, which carried a great number of Muslim pilgrims. There were also Christian passengers and at least one Jew, who had already spotted our travellers in Izmir. The captain sounded a bell when it was prayer-time, and passengers joined the sailors in their prayers, the Muslims going about theirs quietly, the Catholics performing theirs loudly and histrionically (for which they were consequently derided by the Muslims). ‘We tried by gesticulating to make them understand that one could only feel pity for such types of public worship’, Schultz commented.29 Making coffee one afternoon, he was approached by a Turkish boy, who earlier had objected to his lighting a fire on deck for cooking.
— The journey of Stephan Schultz in the Ottoman empire —
He said: bu gavurınun kahvedur? (Is that heathen coffee?) With the word gavur they mean people who are not Muhammedan, but they call in particular Christians by this name, and it obviously meant just that to him: was this Christian coffee? I said: What do you mean? Coffee of the unbelievers? (gavurınun?) He: It does not come from Mecca, does it? I: Certainly not, it is Dutch. He: But aren’t the Dutch gavur (unbelievers) like you? I: Who is a gavur? Can you call a person a gavur who has got Moses, the Prophets, the Psalter, the Evangelists and the Apostles (Apostolic Letters)? He: Do you really have them? I: Certainly, look, and I spread the books [of my Bible] out before him and said: This is the language in which His Word theI steer holy writers, you see, I have got theGod’s book,Spirit I readdictated it, I understand it, to and my faithand, andaslive according to it; can I, in view of this, still be called a gavur (unbeliever)? He: Do the Dutch have it too? I: Yes, and although they may not all read it in this language, they do read it in the Dutch language. Now he looked at the other Muhammedans, our neighbours, and they made him understand that I had spoken truthfully and said gerçek gerçek (it is true, it is true). At that point I got bolder and continued: Just listen, my dear friend, if he who has got the Prophets, the Psalms, the Evangelists and the Apostolic Letters, reads them and organises his life accordingly cannot be an unbeliever, then he who hasn’t all of this must be an unbeliever. Thereupon he looked at me, somewhat taken aback, and I asked: have you got all of this? He: No. I: Therefore you have never read it. How will you know the way to Heaven now that you would call yourself unbelieving? At that point he seemed to have been beaten, and when he saw that the others agreed with me he became ashamed. Having meanwhile cooked the coffee, I gave him a full cup which he drank, listening very quietly to the Sermon on the Mount which Mr. Woltersdorf had begun reading in Turkish a little while earlier. Thus the Lord brought victory here as well and no one that night let us hear the word gavur again.30 A HOLY MAN IN ALEX ANDRIA
The voyage brought the travellers past the islands of Chios, Samos, Kos and Rhodes, and on June the city of Alexandria appeared on the horizon. For fear of plague, they were able to disembark only after some ten days, on June, when the warning was withdrawn. Schultz and Woltersdorf were invited to stay with the British viceconsul. Among their more notable adventures in the city, on July, was an awkward confrontation with a local saint. In the afternoon we went in the company of [the Swedish traveller] Mr. Ferner before thethetown a hill in were ordermany to have a look at the and city,Egyptian but were people unable on to climb to top upon because there Muhammedan the other side of the hill who were performing a pilgrimage to a mosque to which a Tombo or burying-place is being built for a saint who is still among the living. This so-called saint is an insane majnūn whom one calls sant ho[m]me but the Egyptians call him Periabh (Father of Fertility) Periapus. He walks about completely naked as he descended from his mother’s womb, sits on the beach buried in sand from his feet up to his navel; I saw him in that state because his dwelling was not far from our English house and the French consulate. From the upper part of
— Jan Schmidt —
his body, I could gather that he was about eight shoe tall. I only saw him in that position; but my dear Woltersdorf once came across him in the street on his way to the Egyptian women. Mr. Woltersdorf came home, pale and trembling. The consul asked: What had happened to him? Mr. Woltersdorf, after he had somewhat recovered, told us that he had come across a naked person of extraordinary length. The consul replied: it must have been the sant homme whom you may already have seen sitting on the beach from your window; he is held to be a saint by the Egyptians. He then told what later was confirmed by others, namely, that this person is much venerated by Egyptian women who touch his membrum virile 31
with their fingers and kiss these, thinking that they will be fertile . . . . He also said that the wife of the French consul had fallen seriously ill after two similar confrontations on the beach and had hardly dared toleave the house ever since (or even look from her window). Schultz read about the Egyptian saints in Nicolaus Radzivil’s description of Egypt,32 which maintained that their popularity was on the decrease. SODOMY IN ALEPPO
During the winter of –, the travellers were in Aleppo, where they were hospitably received by the Dutch consul Haanwinkel.33 Returning from a visit to the cemetery of the oriental Christians, on MarchSchultz wrote: two Muhammedan boys approached us who jeered at Mr. C.34 because he, while walking, had adopted the habit of sticking out his head in a slightly forward direction; the boys therefore believed that he suffered from a serious illness. One of them shouted: Yā jāhit,35 i.e. O cripple. We fell silent, but immediately behind us there came another Muhammedan who punished the boys and said: Intu jāhit [wa] huwa min sha’nak yahyā elf sinna [sana], i.e. You are a cripple whereas he (whom you abuse) may, for all you know, well live to be a thousand years. Thereupon the boys were ashamed and went away. On account of this observation, I notice that the Muhammedans also use this term of abuse against themselves because venereal diseases have become rather current among them and thiscertainly has its srcin in the so-called sodomy which is very common in these parts; in the same way they do not make a secret of their inclination to desecrating boys. We ourselves have seen several times how in the bazaars (markets) boys committed sinful acts with boys, and even sometimes grown-up men with boys. We are astonished about God’s patience and forbearance that He, who let fire rain fromheaven on Sodom and Gomorra, Admah and Zeboim, because of this sin, and turned them into a sea of brimstone, spares this are drowned the practice of Christians abomination. as long as I have beenpeople in this who country I have seeningestures among andFor Muhammedans and 36 heard such talk that I became quite dumbfounded. In an aside, Schultz remarked that the practice, meant to still their lust, was especially rife among Muslims who were converted Greeks and other Christians and thus had turned their back on the divine order, and not among the ‘Turks proper’. In Europe, by contrast, sodomy was rare, but instead one found the abominable practice of whoring and adultery which, in some countries, had risen to the level of galanterie.37
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THE JEWS OF PALESTINE
On May , during their sojourn in Palestine, they ‘went to see the Jews’ in Tiberias. I and Mr. van Kerchem38 had been recommended from Jerusalem to Joseph Khakham, but we did not find him at home; meanwhile his deputy took our letter and entertained us as well as he could. Firstly he brought us to the Medras (Gymnasium) which they, after that of Safad, hold to be the biggest in the Orient. Here I found about youngsters who were studying the Talmud; some of them were from Poland, others from Italy and elsewhere. One among their teachers still knew some Jiddish, but the others, however, because they had left their fatherland very young, spoke Portuguese or Spanish and Arabic. I had to speak Hebrew therefore, which they understood best, but were not used to speaking. The complaint I held against them was in particular this, that they were acting here as [they used to do] in Europe, namely, neglecting God’s word, the only and right way that leads to life, and preferred man-made laws instead. 39 Some of them argued that one could not understand the Bible without the Talmud, although they admitted that the Bible was the best book there was. None of them, so they confessed, had ever read the books of the Prophets. So how could they know, Schultz objected, that it was the best book? The books of the Prophets were difficult to understand, said one student; but, Schultz again retorted, how could he know? Difficulty, moreover, was no argument; arduous and repeated study should bring enlightenment. The agreed, Schultz thought, although the one who had spoken to him shook hisstudents head in disbelief. Thereupon we were led to the synagogue which is rather big but not clean. They opened the cupboard where their law books were kept and showed us the rolls; later I was led to the window and invited to sit down. . . . I was given a Book of Psalms in order to read from it to them. The book was handed to me by a boy of about years who remained standing at my feet, full of eager expectation; the others also stood before me so that the assembly of big and small, old and young, consisted of about persons.40 Thereupon Schultz read the th and th psalms to them. When he had explained their message, one of them approached the others and said: let us disperse, this is going too deep. When I saw that the others became afraid, I said: Those who have a purified heart and a new spirit do not fear men. The Jews’ fear was caused by the entrance of two court servants of the governor in the synagogue because the Jews feared that a riot might break out. Later I learned, however, that the governor had sent these servants after us for our safety in case we should be insulted by the Jews.41 Schultz hoped that he had stimulated them enough to learn more about Christ in the future.
— Jan Schmidt —
WINED RI NKING MUSLIM S IN ST JEAN D’ACRE
During their long sojourn in Acre, where they stayed in the house of the local consul, Usgate (and where Woltersdorf died), Schultz had ample opportunities to meet local Arabs, and was more than once hospitably received by Bedouins in their camps. He felt sympathy especially towards the latter, not least because they seemed more susceptible to his preaching than the polite but suspicious Jews. They always listened with interest to what he told them about the Messiah, and on one occasion he was even invited to stay with them as their teacher so that he could enlighten them. 42 As in Istanbul, Izmir and elsewhere, there were also the usual official visits to local authorities, mostly members of the de facto ruling family of Palestine headed by Sheykh Daher.43 Thus, on July Schultz accompanied Usgate’s eldest son – the consul himself was ill – to congratulate the sheykh on the Bayram festival. Later they were received by a mute agha from Istanbul who was visiting the sheykh and the Pasha of Saydā (Sidon) on business. ‘Although he was mute’, Schultz wrote, ‘he was able to make himself understandable by gesticulating, and could also read and write. His task in Constantinople is to pare the nails on the hands and feet of the grand vezir; the Grand Signor has also such a
Figure . A legal scholar at work. Eighteenth-century lithograph, courtesy of
Prof. Dr L. P. H. M. Buskens, Leiden.
— The journey of Stephan Schultz in the Ottoman empire —
man’.44 After coffee, he joined the men on board the ship of Captain Francesco Andrioli of Livorno. This greatly pleased the Ottoman official. He was offered lemon juice while the others drank wine, and guns were fired in his honour. Elsewhere, Schultz discussed the prohibition of the consumption of fermented grapes (wine) among Muslims. They often break this rule, he noticed, but would never say that they drink wine, calling it instead breast- or limb-medicine, ordered by a physician. H.M. the Emperor Mahmud used to drink his goblet of good wine in the afternoon or the evening for the benefit of his weak stomach, and Ali Pasha in Aleppo had hisresidence stomach in in Aleppo Greater he Cairo. Now that he travels Cyprus in orderruined to take is offered a small glass ofthrough wine (i.e. the socalled wine of the first press or vergine) at the island’s headquarters; he likes it well and says: Hey, I shall take some barrels of this cordial with me to Aleppo. Since that time he has served himself thereof, but only, like the Emperor Mahmud, for reinvigorating his stomach. The Janissaries, by contrast, drink wine secretly until they fall down. If we, Europeans, drink wine from cups or otherwise small glasses and offer such a small glass to a Janissary, he will refuse it; but if one gives him a full glass three to four times as big, he will take it, hold his handkerchief in front of his face, drink the wine and give the empty glass to the servants. 45 SCRIPTS, BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS
Schultz was an avid reader, but – as he once told a Dutch merchant of Izmir, David George van Lennep, when the latter brought up the subject of metempsychosis and said that he had been reading d’Argent’s Lettres des Juifs and the Turkish Spy46 (all of it useless and a waste of time, according to Schultz) – he restricted his reading to the Bible47 and texts that led to an increase of knowledge: books on natural science 48 and travel literature. His interest in books also inspired him to inspect printing presses – the Turkish one in Istanbul49 and the Hebrew one at Ayn Zaytun near Safad had sadly disappeared50 – visit libraries, borrow books from his hosts, copy books,51 and buy books and manuscripts on the way. He was also interested in the production of manuscripts. In Constantinople as well as Smyrna, Egypt, Syria and Palestine, so far, I have found that scribes, both those serving distinguished gentlemen and [those serving] the law, as well as the writing-masters and many merchants, stick their writing utensils such as inkpot and the receptacle of their quills behind their belt with which they girdle their caftan (long coat) together near their hips, the way soldiers carry their swords. a leather receptacle for paper; have to write a letterInortheir the bosom like theythey takekeep a piece of paper from their bosom ifofthey the size they need, draw a quill from the receptacle, open the inkpot which remains stuck behind their belt, put the paper on their left hand, as a European on a writing-desk, and write what they need to write; even with complete books they use their left hand instead of a desk. As regards the inkpot, it is made either of ebony, horn or, sometimes, brass, but not of silver; it is fastened to the receptacle of the quills (pen-case); the pen-case is not round but one or sometimes two inches broad and about half an inch wide so that three or four quills made of reed can be
— Jan Schmidt —
put into it; its length is to inches . . . . The inkpots fastened to the pen-case are either round or four-, six-, sometimes eight-cornered. Before they fill it with ink, the pot’s inside is covered with wax as we coat the inside of certain vessels with pitch; they put in raw silk which then partly touches the wax; on the lumps of silk proper one pours the ink, covers the inkpot and closes it firmly to avoid it opening. The ink cannot flow out anyway as is the case with our inkpots because the silk absorbs it; this is also why the quill cannot get too full as it happens with us so that the paper becomes pretty blotted. This type of writing-utensil must be very old, since it is already mentioned in Ezekiel, Chapter , verses , and .52 Although Schultz seems to have had little trouble reading the Arabic script, at least as far as it was printed, he had more trouble deciphering the chancery script, dīvānī, used in documents of all kinds. During their journey, both Schultz and Woltersdorf attempted to learn to read and write this script. The latter, already seriously ill, even hired a separate teacher, a Syrian Christian, for this purpose in Aleppo. 53 Later, in Acre, Schultz did the same. These people are very rare but most necessary; a dragoman at the courts, both in Constantinople and in other places, cannot go without them. The Turkish chancellery script is so different from the normal handwritten scripts and the letters that occur in Persian, Turkish and Arabic books that one might take them for a completely different language. That is why I learned this manner of writing in order to make it known to studiosi . . . in Europe. My hoca [teacher] had written a complete inşā [lit. ‘composition’], which I bought from him and which I had read through with him before. İnşā is a book which is known with us in Europe under the name of a guide for letter-writing because one finds in it the titles of the emperor down to the most humble [tramp?]. 54 This was not the only Oriental book Schultz and Woltersdorf bought during their travels. On October , just before leaving Cairo, they purchased ‘some useful Arab books’. One of them, a Coptic volume Schultz particularly liked, had a colophon dated May , and therefore was, he concluded, more than years old. It was filled with allocutions, epistles and ‘catechetical questions’, much revered, comparable with Arndt’s Wahres Christentum55 and well worth translating.56 In Aleppo, they bought ‘some Arabic, Persian and Turkish books’ for the library of the Halle institute from their language teacher.57 Unfortunately, Schultz does not give any titles or even a summary indication of their content. The fate of these manuscripts is obscure. Some of them may have reached Trieste, 58 but another part, perhaps of histhe ‘precious Arabic,part Turkish, Persian as as Armenian manuscripts’ were lostall,when ship carrying of his luggage waswell wrecked off the Dutch island of Texel.59 The travel book ends on this sad note. CONCLUSION
Schultz’s work is remarkable because of its srcinality; it did not rely on existing texts, as did many others in the genre, often to a large extent. Although Schultz may not have been a great stylist – his sentences lack literary flourish and are sometimes clumsy to
— The journey of Stephan Schultz in the Ottoman empire —
the point of being incomprehensible – his book describes aspects not often found in Western travel accounts, typified by the passages discussed above on local clothing, a holy madman in Alexandria, the Jewish colony of Tiberias, manuscripts and writing. The book therefore has much value as a primary source. More unusually, the text is permeated by the voices of local people – Arabs and Turks, Muslims, Christians and Jews. A drawback here is that the conversations Schultz conducted were not prompted by random curiosity. He was a missionary and always tried to steer conversation to the topic of religion and the superiority of the Protestant creed. This in itself is symptomatic of a development in the relations between Europe and the Ottoman world: an increased of European-Christian ideas twentieth and culture into that world, which reached itspenetration apogee in the late nineteenth and early centuries. NOTES A survey of older travel literature is found in Yerasimos . On early travel literature as a source of ethnographic knowledge, see Höfert ; on important topics in later pre-modern travel writing, see Fischer . For an anthology, see Parker . For descriptions of the Ottomans and their world in pre- European travel accounts, see Üçel-Aybet . MS Acad. , a neat copy of the text found in vol. IV of the printed edition, pp. –. The library also owns a collection of private papers in various languages, including Turkish, belonging to the author and his travel companion, MS Acad. . The title refers to Psalm : : ‘With Thy counsel Thou dost lead me / And after honour dost receive me’ (trans. Robert Young). A summary description of Schultz’s journey was published as a seven-page appendix in Callenberg , and selected passages in Wolf-Crome . On Schultz’s personality, see Beltz . A catalogue of these publications with prices was published in Halle in . LdH [ Der Leitungen des Höchsten nach seinem Rath auf den Reisen durch Europa, Asia und Africa] V: . The Halle Institute and its history is briefly mentioned in Latourette : . The activities of the institute, particularly its mission among Polish Jews, are the subject of a research and publishing project conducted by the Franckesche Stiftungen zu Halle and the Jewish-Historical Institute in Warsaw (www.francke-halle.de). See also Müller-Bahlke : –. LdH V: . LdH IV: –. LdH IV: . LdH IV: . Cornelis van der Oudermeulen, merchant in jewellery and oriental textiles; treasurer to the Dutch embassy in Istanbul, –. LdH IV: . LdH IV: –. LdH IV: –. Aleksei Michailovich Obreskov, ambassador to the Porte, –. LdH IV: . LdH IV: . LdH IV: –. LdH IV: . LdH IV: . Koçu : –. Not identified, but obviously a term related to mest, ‘light thin-soled boot worn indoors or inside overshoes’ (Redhouse Turkish Dictionary); cf. Koçu : .
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Cf. Derleme Sözlüğü, X (), p. = entari (loose robe or dress). Koçu : –. Ibid.: . Ibid.: –. LdH IV: –. LdH IV: . LdH IV: –. LdH IV: –. Nicolaus Christophorus Radzivili, Hierosolymitanische Reise und Wegfahrt . . ., . Hendrik Haanwinckel, consul at Aleppo, –. The merchant Carleef, who accompanied them. Probably jāhiz ( ), ‘one who has bulging eyes’. LdH V: –. LdH V: –. Jan van Kerchem, Dutch merchant and consul at Aleppo, –, and one of Schultz’s travelling companions. LdH V: –. LdH V: . LdH V: –. LdH V: –. Zāhir b. al- ‘Umar az-Zaydānī (d. ), cf. Joudah . LdH V: . LdH V: . LdH IV: ; d’Argent’s work is unidentified; the latter item was an anonymous, popular work, L’Espion du Grand-Seigneur, published in six volumes in Paris from onwards; translated into English as Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy and published from . On December , Schultz finished his reading of the Bible in the original languages
(LdH V: ). However, such texts are hardly referred to in the book, although Schultz mentions handbooks on chemistry (by l’Emmery – not identified) and botany (the Simpliciste by Mattioli – probably Pierandra Mattioli, Compendium de plantis omnibus una cum earum iconibus . . ., Venice ), which he consulted every day (LdH IV: ; V: ). LdH IV: ; the printing press set up by İbrahim Müteferrika in Istanbul ceased to exist upon its founder’s death in ; it was revived only briefly in . LdH V: , –. Schultz spent weeks in Cairo copying a Dictionario Arabico Italiano because it contained useful ‘vulgar Arabic words’; LdH IV: . LdH V: –. LdH V: . LdH V: . The meaning of the word ‘Vagin’ in the German text is not clear to me and does not seem to be documented. Johann Arndt, Die Bücher vom wahren Christenthum, based on the author’s sermons, published in a number of volumes in Frankfurt from . LdH IV: –. LdH V: had . (unspecified) ‘books’ (which may also have been manuscripts) with him when he Schultz passed through quarantine in Trieste on his way back to Halle (LdH V: ). LdH IV: n.
CHAPTER TWENTYFOUR
THE RIGHT TO CHOICE
*
Ottoman, ecclesiastical and communal justice in Ottoman Greece
Eugenia Kermeli
T
he Ottoman empire as a multilingual, multicultural and multi-ethnic state attracted the attention of European writers, particularly travellers, from the sixteenth century onwards. The personal interests of such writers necessarily varied – from initial analyses of impressive Ottoman institutions such as the janissaries, in order to explain Ottoman success on the battlefield, to discussion towards the end of the empire of the reasons for its downfall. Non-Muslim Ottoman subjects also received a fair amount of attention, the common theme being ways of survival under the unpredictable Ottoman yoke. In contrast, modern historical research which addresses the issue of coexistence of Muslims and non-Muslims in the empire has found this to be mostly peaceful and generally devoid of the social tensions experienced in Europe in the early modern period. According to Braude and Lewis, the Ottoman empire, as a classical example of a plural society, allowed a great degree of communal autonomy.1 The famous millet system,2 initiated shortly after the conquest of Constantinople in , classified the empire’s zimmis (non-Muslims) into Jewish, Armenian and Orthodox millets, each presided over by its own religious authorities appointed by Istanbul to oversee the empire-wide affairs of the community. This millet system as a socio-cultural and communal framework based on religion and ethnicity used to be considered the basis for the nationalism that tore the empire apart in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.3 Notwithstanding traces of ‘proto-nationalism’ among some non-Muslims from the late eighteenth century onwards, there is now a consensus that such a well-organized millet system was a latter-day Ottoman institution ‘that had been retrospectively 4
castHowever, into the past theexistence form of of “foundation myths”’. whileinthe an early, official and empire-wide ‘system’ has been rightly questioned, the issue of essential legal autonomy for non-Muslim communities remains. Although appointment letters show that the Porte allowed the Orthodox patriarchs to adjudicate in cases of Christian family law, marriage, divorce and inheritance, there has been heated historical debate over the extent of jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts and their power to impose their decisions. The presence of many non-Muslims in the courts of the Ottoman kadi (judge) even for family law cases has led historians to question the very existence of separate legal forums for Chris
— Eugenia Kermeli —
tians. Records show that, for whatever reasons, and despite the fact that zimmi sources often describe them as corrupt and discriminatory, non-Muslims frequently resorted to Ottoman kadi courts. Ronald C. Jennings notes that non-Muslim courts are never mentioned in the sicil records of the kadi courts, a fact which could lead historians to ‘suppose that [the zimmis] had no internal judicial apparatus of their own or at least a very weak one’.5 This apparent failure of parochial leadership to exert its legal prerogatives has been viewed as a function of Ottoman counter-regulations, of Ottoman equivocation, or of weak communal organization.6 From a different point of view, the legal choice enjoyed by Ottoman subjects in their pursuit of justiceofhasthebeen discussed primarily privilege granted toJoseph the non-Mus7 Scholars lim populations empire. such asasaAryeh Shmuelevitz, Hacker and Nicolaos Pantazopoulos have used responsa and patriarchal and synodical letters to prove the existence of separate courts operating in the Ottoman empire for Christians and Jews. They have illuminated the points of tension between these separate courts and the kadi courts of Islamic law – tensions which emanated from the doctrinal differences and procedural practices of different bodies of law.8 They have also focused on the level of legal autonomy enjoyed by non-Muslim subjects and on questions posed by scholars’ utilization of kadi court records. If indeed the zimmis (Christians and Jews) had the right to settle most of their legal affairs in officially and communally recognized zimmi courts – when these cases did not cross religious boundaries, involve capital crimes, or threaten public order and security – how can we explain their opting for kadi courts, especially in family law cases? In her study of the kadi court of Sofia, Rossitsa Gradeva argues that Christians preferred the Ottoman court because it provided better documentation, lower fees, more favourable procedures and a greater likelihood of being able to enforce its rulings.9 Litigants had access to certain rights if they applied outside their own legal system. For example, Jewish women could get a divorce and claim inheritance.10 However, these are examples of legal awareness and a legal environment readily offering advice to individuals regardless of their religious or legal status. They do not address the question of the legal autonomy of zimmis or the degree of this autonomy. ECCLESIASTICAL AND COMMUNAL JUSTICE: SOURCES AND SCOPE
Historical evidence for the study of zimmi courts is problematic. For Jewish communities, the communal court records required to balance the information gained from Ottoman sicils (kadi court records) have been lost: ‘for all intents and purposes there exists today not a single series of Jewish court records’.11 Responsa collections 12
are restricted a specific or time period. and However, for the Orthodox Church in thetoGreek landscommunity of the empire, ecclesiastical communal court records are preserved in considerable numbers in the national and local archives of Greek cities and monasteries. These have been little used.13 There are many reasons for the silence surrounding these sources in historical discourse. The major hurdle is an ideological one. Even today, some Greek scholars argue vigorously about the privileges given to the patriarch, and his instrumental role and that of the Church in preserving Greek national identity through the millet system during ‘the long and dark ages of the
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Turkish yoke’ (tourkokratia). For these scholars, patriarchal letters and synodical and canonical orders prove the existence of a centralized system. They also demonstrate the degree of obedience required by the patriarch and offered by his obedient local dignitaries and lay Christians. Thus, the three canonical orders sent by the Patriarch Maximos II some time between and to instruct judges and to stress that marriage cases should be judged only by bishops are evidence that a judicial system existed in the fifteenth century.14 However, the challenge is not to prove the existence of such judicial bodies, but to determine their jurisdiction, to discuss the body of law used, and to explore the degree of interaction between different legal systems in the Ottoman empire. documents (berats) of patriarchs and metropolitans allow us to anaThe appointment lyse the degree of judicial jurisdiction given by the Ottomans to the Orthodox Church and how this changed over time. Elizabeth Zachariadou, in a study of the earliest Ottoman documents relating to the Orthodox Patriarchate, has questioned the notion of privileges being given to the first patriarch, Gennadios Scholarios, by Mehmed II.15 She 16 depicts an institution subordinated to and in need of Ottoman executive authority. The majority of ecclesiastical court records date from the seventeenth century, which raises the question of why local bishops began to document their decision s at that point. Was it as a result of a change in their judicial authority or in line with general developments in Ottoman society? Did episcopal decisions carry more weight in litigation processes if used in other courts from the seventeenth century onwards? Did Christians begin to apply more frequently to communal courts, or were they simply more conscious of their rights and better informed on legal procedures? Other issues to explore would be the extent of adherence to the ecclesiastical judicial jurisdiction granted by the Ottomans, and whether local societies and bishops oversaw other civil matters in addition to family affairs and arbitration cases. An investigation of the interaction between kadi and ecclesiastical courts, and whether the local bishop accepted thekadi’s decisions, would allow us to determine the degree of autonomy enjoyed by zimmi courts. On this last point, we should consider whether zimmi courts were simply arbitration bodies or whether they were established courts whose decisions were respected and imposed. The problem modern scholars face in answering this question stems from Austinian legal positivism and the nineteenth-century bourgeois liberal understanding that the word ‘law’ was restricted to social control exercised by the state, and that the state retained the exclusive right to exercise coercion. In such a case, we could expect to see a linear structure of non-Muslim courts —> kadi court (local Muslim judge) —> divan court (imperial appeal court). In fact, it is clear that, by excommunication or imposition of fines on local communities, a non-Muslim court actually possessed a considerable degree of coercion. Research also shows that, despite the fact that non-Muslim had to accept Further, the decisions of other courts, such decisions wascourts not always possible. litigants did not alwaysimplementing follow a linear order, but applied to different forums according to their legal strategy, using the decisions of one forum as a legal tool in another. Thus, non-Muslim legal forums were more than arbitration bodies, and will be considered here as courts even if some of them, especially the communal ones and ecclesiastical courts adjudicating on civil cases, lacked official recognition. In ecclesiastical courts, canonical and Byzantine law formed the corpus of law utilized by the bishop. In communal courts, we observe regional variations termed ‘local
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custom’ (in Ottoman, adet). Most surviving community records are located in the Aegean islands, where for historical and geographical reasons, such as an island’s status before conquest and the way an area was incorporated into the Ottoman system, the legal system developed in an idiosyncratic manner. ‘Local custom’ was a mixture of Byzantine, canonical, Latin/Venetian and Ottoman influences. Unlike ecclesiastical records, which concentrate primarily on family matters, community records are a rich source of cases related to taxation, intercommunal administration, civil matters, family law and even (albeit rarely) criminal law. Here again, researchers have different ideological perspectives. For some, these records are the best examples of a communal organization centred on thesocietal Church, functioning as ‘pockets as ‘fine examples of independent bodies taking the lead in oftheresistance’ struggle and against the 17 oppressors in the nineteenth century’. For others, these are examples of idiosyncratic insularités, a result of the interaction between geography and the nature of the Ottoman presence in the region.18 The sources available on ecclesiastical justice before the first ecclesiastical court records of the seventeenth century are mainly letters sent to the patriarch from local bishops, or orders from him to local bishops to attend to the affairs of laymen who had requested his arbitration. One of the earliest extant references, concerning a litigation process conducted by ecclesiastical authorities, indicates Greek attitudes to Ottoman rule on the Aegean island of Limnos within twenty years of its conquest. 19 Around , the metropolitan of Limnos wrote to the monastic council at Karyes in Mount Athos concerning litigation over a sheep-run between the dependencies of the Athonite monasteries of Dionysiou and of Pantokrator on the island. The case had been judged by the metropolitan himself with the help of the elders, who are the signatory witnesses in the document. In terms of procedure, the litigants (the representatives of the two monastic dependencies), Kallistos of the Dionysiou monastery and Neophytos of Pantokrator, were present. The elders were summoned and ‘under threat, on pain of spiritual punishment’, were asked ‘for the truth’. On close examination of the charters of both parties, they concluded unanimously in favour of the Dionysiou monastery. Although this must have been the end of the dispute, the metropolitan’s letter states that Neophytos of the Pantokrator monastery had been ‘unruly’ and had threatened to take his case to foreigners – i.e., the Ottoman authorities. It was for this reason that the letter was sent to the monks of Mount Athos, his superiors. The metropolitan urged that there should be no disorder or ‘spreading of scandal among the barbarians [the Ottomans]’. The defiant Neophytos was threatened with aphorism (excommunication), the only tool available in the hands of the Church. The witnesses to the case are of interest. Nine Christians and three Muslims – possibly converts – signed the document. Of the nine, five were clearly religious men (priests or monks), one was the son of a The priest, and theofothers had the title ‘kyr’ (lord), their high position in society. presence new Muslims as witnesses doesdenoting not signify a shared court, but suggests that they remained respected social elders. This letter indicates that, already by , while the justice of the metropolitan was binding on the local community, litigants reserved the right – and sometimes exercised it – to plead their cases to the Ottoman authorities. It was through fear of interference that the ecclesiastical and communal authorities tried to prevent this.20 Patriarchal and metropolitan letters and orders concentrated primarily on family law and the internal organization of the Church. Occasionally, ecclesiastical
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authorities were asked to intervene in disputes by adopting an arbitration role rather than a formal judicial one.21 The tool used to persuade wrongdoers was the threat of excommunication, a powerful weapon in pre-modern societies.22 Only the Ottomans had actual executive power, as indicated in the berats of appointment of patriarchs and metropolitans, wherein the Ottoman administration explicitly defined the boundaries of ecclesiastical judicial jurisdiction. It is apparent that any privileges given were personal to the patriarch and not to the Church,23 and that ecclesiastical jurisdiction was restricted to family law only. Here, the sultan recognized adet (custom) and did not refer to the kanun (administrative law). In a berat Patriarch wasThe granted authority to appoint and issued removebyhisBayezid clergy II at in will, and to inherit Symeon from them. patriarch was to oversee marriage, divorce and inheritance according to their ‘custom’. If a lay Christian did not marry or divorce according to religious practices, then he or she could not be accepted in the Church.24 On inheritance, a berat of Süleyman issued in to Patriarch Ieremias permitted the involvement of the Ottoman provincial authorities if the heirs in a disputed case referred the matter to them.25 This is the first known mention of the right to judicial choice for the Christians of the empire in inheritance cases. Seventeenth-century berats further elaborate the patriarch’s right to punish. In , the metropolitan of Crete, Athanasios, was granted a detailed appointment order clarifying his financial responsibilities to the Porte, his right to inherit from clergymen and to collect ecclesiastical dues. Additionally, he was allowed to punish priests who refused to pay their taxes to the treasury. 26 This development was related to the change in the tax collection system in the seventeenth century. As local communities were collectively responsible for the payment of their taxes, local bishops functioned as tax collectors in the iltizam (tax farming) system.27 A bishop’s right to punish those who defied religious laws on marriage was also upheld: the sultan forbade local Ottoman officials such as kadis, naibs (deputy kadis) and dignitaries from imposing fines, a ruling which indicates that there had been encroachment on previously accepted judicial rights of the Orthodox Church.28 The sultan also forbade similar attempts when the bishop imposed an oath or aphorism in marital disputes. A further development regarding the judicial authority of bishops was established in the berat of the metropolitan of Crete, in which he was permitted to act as arbitrator between lay Christians who had jointly agreed to submit to his judgement, and to administer oaths as part of Church procedure.29 The long-established practice of arbitration seen in patriarchal and episcopal orders is here reflected in an Ottoman order. Clearly, the authority of the Church to adjudicate marriage, divorce and inheritance issues of lay Christians, though established a personal privilege granteddid by not the sultan to patriarchs and metropolitans from theasfifteenth century onwards, deter the interference of local Ottoman dignitaries. The numerous warnings against their encroachment included in the berats reflected a continual struggle between the Church and the Ottoman central administration. On the one hand, the administration recognized the Church with limited judicial rights; on the other, it was not willing to limit the individual judicial freedom of its subjects to submit to the legal body of their choice. However, the extension of judicial jurisdiction to include cases of amicable settlement should not be viewed as an establishment of the authority of the Church
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over its people. When this occurred, it was an external rather than an internal development. The changes in seventeenth-century Ottoman society and the expansion of the tax-farming system, with religious leaders participating as tax farmers, resulted in the strengthening of local communities, as they were collectively responsible for their obligations to the administration. This then gave the Church and other local elements the opportunity to establish authority over the zimmis, in their role as agents/mediators between the centre and the periphery. 30
ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS AND CODICES
In ecclesiastical courts, litigants made an oral request to apply to the court and were summoned to appear together, unless one of them presented a written statement instead. Cases were heard by the bishop, accompanied by a number of priests and archons (local elders). The written record of a decision was certified at the end of the entry either by the bishop alone, affixing his seal, or supplemented by the signatures of the witnesses – in their own hand or added by the scribe. All witnesses were male; in one known case a Muslim also signed. The detail of decisions recorded varied according to the nature of the dispute and the degree of questioning by the bishop, who might also allow expert witnesses to assess the statements.31 In some cases, confession proved full proof of a claim; observable signs were also accepted as full proof. However, documentation was the most important tool in the litigation process. This could consist of copies of statements, wills and dowry contracts registered in the codex, hüccets (deeds) issued by the kadi, or accounting books of trading partners.32 All documents had equal weight in court. If a document was disputed or was said to have been obtained by force, a minimum of two witnesses were examined, sometimes under threat of aphorism and an oath when there was no other proof.33 Once a decision was reached and registered, the bishop would write an aphorism to deter anyone who might wish to dispute his decision in future. There is no further evidence of another form of punishment exercised by the metropolitans. However, one reference suggests that they were aware of community punishment. In , a proven adulteress was noted in the ecclesiastical record as having been ‘punished by her own community with external punishment’.34 The material contained in the ecclesiastical codices provides information on a wide range of personal and family matters, as indicated by the cases registered in the codex of Sisaniou in Macedonia, dating from onwards. 35 The majority are inheritancerelated. Wills were registered in the codex; heirs sought the intervention of the bishop where misunderstandings arose regarding the division of property; under-age children’s property was handed over to their guardians after the division; adopted children sought rights in court. A significant partdating of thefrom codex, is also to financial disputestheir among trading partners, the earliest ordevoted to the acknowledgment and payment of debts. Only a few cases are related to civil law, for example, disputes over the boundaries of a house. The codex has a few entries on monastic properties, the refurbishing of churches, and debts owed by clergymen. Communal debts and disputes against other communities were infrequently registered, and not before the nineteenth century. This was probably the result of administrative changes following the issuance of the Hatt-i Hümayun of , a Greek translation of which is found in the codex.36
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Although inheritance is well represented in the code, marriage and dowry contracts are absent, and there are only four cases of divorce, due to fornication, illness of the spouse or abandonment. This strengthens the hypothesis that other codices, perhaps thematic ones, were kept in parallel. This assumption is supported by the contents of the codex of Trikkes in Thessaly.37 Relating to a relatively small metropolitan see, this codex includes entries on various ecclesiastical and property matters, but the greater part of it is devoted to family law, especially divorce, pre-nuptial gifts, dowry contracts, inheritance disputes, the appointment of guardians, claims of inheritance upon maturity, and wills. The same is true for the codex of Kos (Chios), where, out of notary and tentatively judicial decisions, fifty-nine divorce cases. We can conclude that thewere registration of cases heard in the episcopal courts was voluntary. Litigants applying to the ecclesiastical court received the decision of the metropolitan in a separate sheet. If they then wished to have the decision registered in the codex, as we conclude from a entry, the registration fee was high ( aslan guruş), perhaps prohibiting the registration of all decisions.38 Indication of the need to register is stated in some entries in the codex of Sisaniou and Siatistas: ‘a copy [of the decision] should be registered in the present Holy Codex, as it is the custom, and it should be sealed to have weight and power in any court [kritirio] internal [communal] and external [Ottoman]’.39 In cases of sulh (amicable settlement), the litigants agreed to provide each other with a hüccet obtained from the kadi as a further guarantee. Registration in the codex was to be used as proof of the agreement. 40 This examination of ecclesiastical justice therefore points to a legal body, initially concerned mainly with family law, which from the late seventeenth century acquired greater significance within Orthodox communities. Litigants who sought ecclesiastical court justice were prepared to register episcopal decisions officially in ecclesiastical codices, despite the considerable cost involved. Ottoman recognition of this role of the Church, as reflected in eighteenth-century berats, allowed Christian litigants to use the episcopal court, the decisions of which were binding. Those who wished to strengthen their position further could also register the decision of the non-Muslim court in the kadi court. By the late eighteenth century, the Church had succeeded in expanding its jurisdiction to civil law.41 This was a de facto development, resulting from the increased political role given by the Ottomans to the Patriarchate of Istanbul, which in – annexed the rival Patriarchates of Ochrid and Pec.42 This judicial expansion of the jurisdiction of metropolitan courts in the Aegean islands is attested in the many cases of real estate and other civil differences judged by the metropolitan of Paronaxia (the islands of Paros and Naxos) during the entire second half of the eighteenth century. 43 As a result of these developments, the Orthodox Church came to operate antagonistically with the other source of justice available to Christians in the Ottoman empire – i.e., the communal courts. COMMUNAL COURTS
A number of theories have been proposed to help explain the existence of communal courts in the Greek lands under the Ottomans. These fall into two main groups: those which maintain the uninterrupted continuation of communal institutions from ancient times to the present 44 and those which propose the importance of Ottoman influence on the development of local community councils.45 Most of the available
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sources, dating from the mid-seventeenth century, support the second theory. A further indication of the ‘informal’ development of Christian communities in Greece is the fact that community courts varied regionally in numbers and organization. Communal justice was far more complex than ecclesiastical justice. In the Aegean, previous Frankish/Venetian legal practices interacted with Byzantine legislation, ‘local custom’ and Ottoman influence in an idiosyncratic manner unique to each island. This is a fascinating and as yet unexplored subject. In communal courts the majority of members were community elders, elected annually. Clergymen sometimes participated, but as representatives of the community rather than of the Church. Occasionally, dignitaries such as voyvoda s or were members, or appointed localOttoman elders as their representatives. As most of dragomans these officials were Christians, we would have to examine their role in court to determine whether they participated officially as members of the Ottoman administration or simply as negotiators to eradicate points of conflict.46 As in ecclesiastical courts, procedure was oral, confession was considered to be full proof, and oath coupled with the threat of aphorism was administered in case of a lack of evidence. Documents were copies from the communal codes, private documents signed in front of witnesses, or any official Ottoman documentation. Community council decisions were generally respected within the community, although community members were free to apply to other courts. Where decisions were contested, appeal could be made to the Ottoman courts or to the kapudan paşa (the Ottoman chief admiral), in whose governorate the islands lay. Favourable decisions would be taken back to the communal court for acceptance and registration. As the expense of ‘external litigation’ was high, it was often agreed beforehand that the party referring a case to the kadi would have to bear the costs. Local community elders used fines to add weight to their decisions. As a further sanction, in a society where community and neighbourly assistance was important, non-compliant members could be deprived of communal protection. In a case from Syros in , a woman named Margarita had been unco-operative and refused to comply with the advice of the castelano (clerk of the court) that she remove stones from the front yard of her neighbour’s house. The elders decided to hand her over to the Ottoman officials who were visiting the island so that she could be punished and forced to pay a fine. She was also ordered to pay indemnities to her neighbour for his losses. Finally, she would not be defended by any epitropos or proestos (communal elders) in the Ottoman court, and would have to pay a fine of guruş to the representative of the ağa (the local tax collector), regardless of the outcome of the case.47 Community council records from the Aegean islands detail a wide range of civil law cases, in particular business deals, debt and criminal punishment. 48 They are also a particularly useful source for assessing local–Ottoman relations. This is due, firstly, to theongenerally more idiosyncratic nature of theallowed Ottoman the islands than the mainland. Local communities were to presence continue inpre-conquest judicial practices, with the result that a substantial number of extant sources, including adjudication and notarial documents, are preserved. Secondly, since representatives of Ottoman justice were not always readily available on each island, and on account of the ‘privileges’ granted to these communities, we can trace the interaction between different sources of justice, communal and Ottoman. Most of the islands came under Ottoman rule in the fifteenth century; in Rhodes was captured from the Knights of St John, and in Syros, Ios, Paros, Antiparos, Skyros and North Sporades were
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added to the province of the kapudan paşa. Ottoman sovereignty was established on Chios in and, in stages, on Naxos by the s.49 Whether these islands were autonomous areas or were integrated into the Ottoman system (and, if so, to what degree) is a subject of debate.50 In the ahdnames51 given to the population of Chios in and to Naxos, Paros, Andros, Mylos, Syros and Santorini in , the balance between Ottoman and local justices was carefully delineated. For example, new judicial cases could be heard by sancak beyis, kadis or naibs, but they were not allowed to judge cases which had already been heard in Christian courts and had to accept previously held documentation. If someone appealed to against previous the kadi could notchose interfere, but had to leave the islanders solve athe disputedecision, among themselves. If they to resort to the arbitration of a third party, the kadi would simply verify the settlement. Wills would be respected, and could not be interfered with by local dignitaries. No one could force Christian women to marry against the (canon) law. If a person had a dispute, he or she would not be prevented from bringing the case to the Ottoman court; neither the sancak beyi nor the kadi could prevent anyone from petitioning and complaining to the Porte.52 In similar fashion to the berats of ecclesiastical authorities, ahdnames portray the framework of judicial freedom granted to Aegean islanders. The undisputed authority of local arbitration and the use of legal documentation suggest that the subsequent pursuit of justice in the Ottoman legal system was much more complicated than appears when using only kadi court records. The right to apply to any court or arbitration body is established again in the imperial orders and was exercised by Christian subjects even in ‘highly self-governed’ communities. The right was frequently exercised by islanders, despite the physical effort and high costs involved in having a case heard before the kadi, especially for those who had to travel to find the representative of ‘imperial justice’. INTERACTION OF ECCLESIASTI CAL AND COMMUNAL JUS TI CE WI TH OT TO MAN JUS TI CE
It is now clear that, contrary to the impression given when using only Ottoman records, non-Muslims often used both their own and Ottoman courts on matters which, strictly speaking, should not have involved the Ottoman authorities. This occurred in cases either where their own systems of justice did not produce the desired result (as often in divorce cases) or where the extra authority of the kadi’s court could ensure that a decision was carried out. Kadis were appointed to large and important islands such as Chios, Rhodes, Mytilene, Paros, Andros and Samos. Foreign travellers visiting the islands attested the factTournefort that sometimes the kadi almost the only Ottoman presence there. Thetotraveller reported thatwas smaller islands relied on travelling kadis, who adhered to local custom and accepted the services of community elders. Frequent corsair attacks, or Venetian–Turkish wars in the seventeenth century, often resulted in the evacuation of the kadi for safety reasons.53 The presence of corsairs in the region had further ramifications for the administration of justice. Tournefort notes that the Knights of Malta would occasionally answer the complaints of Catholic islanders against Greeks, and would administer fines or strokes as punishment. 54 The
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other source of Ottoman justice on the islands was the kapudan paşa, as provincial governor and recipient of most taxes. 55 Cases could be heard on appeal in his council or on his annual tour of the islands. The role of the dragoman (the admiral’s Greekspeaking translator), who was instrumental in the preparation and execution of cases, increased towards the end of the eighteenth century. 56 Since the Church was reluctant to dissolve marriages, spouses applying for a divorce would be advised to reconsider, and the bishop might intervene personally in order to eliminate some of the sources of grievance and prevent separation. Dissatisfaction with this procedure could lead to an appeal to the kadi’s court. For example, in atheyoung womanand named Eireneseparation presented and her case in front metropolitan and clergymen, requested divorce from of herthe husband Triantafyllos, claiming that he was cruel and beat her daily. On being summoned to court, her husband was reprimanded, but to no avail. Eirene then ‘decided to betray her belief in the church, and although she would be punished by God, she went to an external court [i.e., the kadi court] and she was separated from his [her husband’s] tyrannical hand’. The bishop subsequently accepted the kadi’s ruling and a divorce settlement in which Triantafyllos promised to return to Eirene her dowry and half of the pre-nuptial gifts.57 This is an excellent example of how ecclesiastical and Ottoman courts could be used to the same end by a non-Muslim. After her initial failure to obtain a divorce from the bishop, Eirene applied successfully to the kadi, but she still needed to have her divorce recognized by the ecclesiastical court in order to gain a recognized canonical divorce, which would permit her to remarry without difficulty. In a dispute registered on Syros in , Linardos Halavazis applied to the kadi’s court in an attempt to force his father-in-law to return property previously given as dowry and which the latter had repossessed while the litigant was absent in Istanbul. 58 It is not clear whether Linardos had tried communal justice before taking his cause to the Ottomans, but the executive authority behind the kadi’s decision must have been the reason for his application. However, in the islands the kadi’s decision could be implemented only by the local, communal administration. In this case, it did so by banning Linardos’s non-compliant father-in-law from access to the disputed property under threat of a fine payable to the local Ottoman dignitary, in the certainty that, if necessary, this would be collected. Sometimes litigants tried their luck in two different kadi courts before reaching an agreement. In , in the disputed case of a field left by will to a monastery, the heirs claimed it from the prior of the monastery in the presence of the kadi and won. The prior then took the case to another kadi, who judged in his favour. The two parties subsequently reached agreement by negotiation between themselves, as the costs of taking the same case to different forums was high.59 kadi sometimes Onathe othercalled hand,Frosyne fear of being taken led to ainjustice. woman appealed to to thethe communal court against creditor In of her deceased husband who, she claimed, had forced her to sign a pledge in the kadi court. The local court, taking into consideration that a judicial act was made under duress, promptly rectified it. Equally, both local Ottoman officials, such as voyvodas, and community elders were themselves reprimanded if they violated local custom and/ or Ottoman law.60 A variety of crimes might be referred to the Ottoman court if they could not be dealt with satisfactorily by communal courts and their punishments. Petty theft and
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damage to property and persons were dealt with internally by the communities, who tended to be lenient in order to avoid involving the imperial authorities. However, habitual offenders were turned over to Ottoman justice. 61 Slander was punishable in an Ottoman court if accusations of guilt continued to be made after an accused had been cleared of wrongdoing by the kadi. Incidents of bodily harm incurred indemnities, following the prescriptions of Ottoman law. In cases of homicide and rape, kidnapping, prostitution and other sexual crimes, Ottoman officials or their representatives had ultimate authority over judgements. Finally, communal documents can shed light on the sulh procedure observed in the kadi court, and particularly on useplayed of written evidence in the Muslim where traditionally words and witnesses a more significant role. In onecourt, case, where the kadi could not decide after hearing the two parties, he summoned the elders of the community and asked them to investigate the ‘letters of the two sides presented to him, and to tell him whatever they knew about the case, so that he would decide’.62 While Ottoman documents such as the hüccet were accepted in communal courts, locals occasionally had problems reading Ottoman, and decisions based on them could be conditional.63 Many Turkish loanwords, especially judicial and taxation terms, found their way into the Greek communal and ecclesiastical records. Sometimes even full Ottoman phrases were included to avoid any misunderstandings and the subsequent contesting of the decision.64 INTERIM CONCLUSIONS
The claim that ecclesiastical and communal courts were no more than legend is clearly disproved by the above discussion of ecclesiastical and communal records. However, the existence of these records raises many other questions. In terms of judicial autonomy it appears that, on the whole, until the eighteenth century, ecclesiastical jurisdiction followed the rights granted by the sultans in the appointment berats of patriarchs and metropolitans, and that it covered primarily family law. Even the expansion of Church jurisdiction to include arbitration cases was initially only granted de jure for family-related issues. De facto, as we can deduce from patriarchal interventions in civil cases, Christians applied civil disputes to the judgement of clergymen, albeit informally. This ambiguity about rights and responsibilities allowed the patriarchate to take the lead and establish an undisputed authority from the mid-eighteenth century, not only in the traditionally accepted area of family law, but also in civil law. It is not coincidental that Byzantine legal manuals such as the Hexabiblos were published and widely circulated around the same time to ‘educate’ clergymen on issues of civil law.65 The political support enjoyed by the patriarchate after the annexation of rival patriarchates and of theecclesiastical active involvement of Phanariots in church affairs facilitated the jurisdiction. No research has been done on whether ad hoc expansion the Ottomans were aware of and fully supported such developments. However, we do know that local Christian communities were not at ease with the expansion of the judicial authority of the Church to civil law, since this was considered a communal responsibility. Regardless of whether the sultans endorsed or ignored the decisions of the patriarch, in the seventeenth century provincial administrative and taxation reforms began to create more coherent Christian communities. They also allowed local agents, clergy
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or laymen to act as mediators between the centre and the periphery and as translators of the communal voice through the iltizam system. To some extent, Aegean island communities had already attained this status in the sixteenth century as a result of the idiosyncratic character of Ottoman conquest and presence. Local community councils, although differing in structure according to local custom, judged and registered decisions of law on obligation, succession law, commercial law, property law and even torts against persons. Documentation, being important in the litigation process both inside the communities and in Ottoman courts, produced admirable volumes of notarial and community records. Scholars have identified elements of Byzantine and Frankish/Venetian which thattothecontinue legal structure andOttomans. notarial tradition inherited from previouslaw, rulers was show allowed under the However, a large part of what is termed ‘local custom’ still awaits proper attention from experts in Ottoman law. Even in such a highly independent legal system, there was clearly an unimpaired legal choice to transfer cases to Ottoman courts; the Ottoman administration and its legal system were utilized in ingenious ways at every stage of litigation. In other words, the level of judicial autonomy local communities enjoyed neither hindered individual freedom of legal choice nor undermined Ottoman law as the law of the land. However, the supremacy of Ottoman law did not necessarily compromise earned legal privileges. Cases were reviewed and decisions of Ottoman dignitaries were cancelled if they were in obvious conflict with local custom.66 A second set of unanswered questions is related to the reasons why ecclesiastical and communal court records were codified mostly in the seventeenth century. Christians paid handsomely to have their decisions, witnesses, out-of-court settlements and contracts registered in Christian codices. According to the entries, this was to safeguard the owners of documents from future claims in the Christian or Ottoman courts, or in order to be used as part of their litigation strategy in ‘external’ and ‘internal’ justice. We can presume that this was a result of the general legal awareness that Ottoman subjects exhibited from this period onwards. The judicial system became more organized, the kadi expanded his jurisdiction even to penal law, and communities and individuals explored the right of appeal to the Porte and registered their complaints in şikayet defterleri (registers of complaints).67 Christians and Muslims seemed to be more legally educated. Many private documents attest to the writing up of contracts in the presence of bishops without a subsequent registration in episcopal codes. However, the question remains as to why certain communities did not codify Christian court decisions or did so very late (around the turn of the nineteenth century). Until detailed regional studies emerge, we can only guess that the legal ‘autonomy’ of Christians was determined by the degree of Ottoman ‘state’ manifestation. Thus, in certain Greek lands, such as the mainland, where community organization did not or could not develop beyond taxationfactors duties,tothe sufficient to supplement the s. Other takemetropolitan into accountcodices are thewere influence of existing legal tradikadi sicilits tion and practices and literacy levels in different areas of the Ottoman empire. The Christian court records further our knowledge of the function of the kadi and the administration of Ottoman justice. Documents written in Greek were presented to kadis not only to establish the identity of the parties and witnesses involved but also as judicially legitimate sources of information.68 These could include written registration of a previous oral agreement. 69 Christian ecclesiastical and communal court records complement the silence of the kadi records regarding the identity of arbitrators
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and their function where the names of the witnesses and the terms of the agreement are clearly registered. The system of arbitration was highly developed, with threats of excommunication and fines employed to guarantee acceptance of the decision. Finally, the Christian archives provide a glimpse of local networks ready to offer legal and other assistance to all Ottoman subjects, regardless of faith or legal status. For instance, it has always been assumed that kadis received a certain amount of local help, given that they changed posts frequently. Local records provide evidence of local community leaders (noted under terms such as ayan-ı nasara) assisting travelling kadis on their visits to remote islands and co-operating with local Ottoman dignitaries to uphold and provided to demand the expulsion of undesirable offenders.inSimilarly, Ottomanmorality dignitaries statements to facilitate claims registered notarial codes. However, there is a lot yet to be done to identify whether social status was a determining factor in achieving legal pluralism. We should note, however, that utilizing any ‘legal tool’ to attain justice was not a practice exclusive to Christians. Muslims were also aware of the power of certain Christian legal tools and could use these in their pursuit of justice. When in , Şah Sultan sent her tax collector Yusuf Ağa to Andros to collect her dues, he asked for a new evaluation of taxation and requested an aphorism from the local bishop to ensure that the Christian estimators did their job fairly.70 Examples like this indicate the complex legal environment shared by Muslims and Christians in Ottoman society. NOTES * A longer version of this essay, containing additional references and comments, was srcinally published in Andreas Christmann and Robert Gleave (eds), Studies in Islamic law: a Festschrift for Colin Imber (Oxford, ): – [Journal of Semitic Studies, supplement ]. I am grateful to the editors and to Oxford University Press for permission to publish this version. Braude and Lewis : . According to the millet system theory, the head of the Orthodox, Armenian and Jewish millet was personally responsible for the affairs of the community vis-à-vis the Porte. They acted as the administrative officer responsible to the state for their community, and to their community for the state, maintaining the fiscal and juridical autonomy of each recognized community. Thus, through this system the Ottoman dealt with their non-Muslims as members of a community, not as individuals. Karpat : . al-Qattan : ; Masters : . Jennings : ; cf. Faroqhi a: , –. Shmuelevitz ; Pantazopoulos : –; Hacker : –. Fattal ; al-Qattan ; İnalcık : II, . Shmuelevitz : –; Goodblatt : –. Gradeva a; cf. Ergene : –. Shmuelevitz : –, ; Cohen : –. Hacker : . al-Qattan : . Many have been published in Greek, but a great number are still in manuscript form. For a detailed bibliography, see Arnaoutoglou, www.geocities.ws/ekeied/. Cf. Kermeli : , n. , for a partial list. Gkines : . Zachariadou . Cf. Konortas .
— Eugenia Kermeli — Paparrygopoulos : –; Paparrygopoulos : /, ; Vacalopoulos: : II, . Cf. Vatin and Veinstein : –. Oikonomides : –. Lowry : –, for an alternative reading of this document; cf. Kermeli : , n. . Kermeli : –, for two cases of arbitration between laymen (one of them involving a Turkish ‘lord’ and thekadi’s court) in the s. Mihaelaris : –. Zachariadou : –. This is in accordance with the Islamic prescription wherein collectiv
ity is not legally recognized. Zachariadou : . Zachariadou : . Stavrinides –: II, –. Ibid.: II, , , . Ibid.: II, . Ibid.: II, –; Kermeli : –. Kermeli . Kermeli : –, on the law books used by the Orthodox Church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Pantazopoulos : , , –, – respectively. Giannoules : ; Pantazopoulos : . Pantazopoulos : . Pantazopoulos and Papastathi : passim. Cf. Kermeli : ff., for detailed references to the codices discussed in this section. Giannoules . Pantazopoulos and Papastathi : doc. , –. E.g., ibid.: ,, doc. , . dated . Ibid.: , doc. dated Pantazopoulos : ; Gkines : . Pantazopoulos : . Lykouris : . Paparrygopoulos : –; Vacalopoulos : II. Urquhart : II, , ; Argyropoulos : II, , –. Tourtoglou and Paparrega-Artemiade : –. Siatras : . Cf. Kermeli : –. Slot . Koukou : I, –; Vacalopoulos : I, –; Vatin : –. There is extensive discussion as to whether ahdnames resemble ‘capitulations’ or were appointing documents (berats). Unfortunately, the Ottoman srcinals have not yet been found. However, the Greek translation of the privilege charter given to the Cyclades islands mentioned that Ieronymos Somaripas, Bartholomaios Kampy and Michael Pangalos had petitioned the Porte on behalf of the islanders and were granted a berat similar to the one given to Chios. The confusion in terminology andahdname the adaptation of the term ahdname, which denotes a covenant, stems from the practice that s, like all documents conferring a privilege, were drawn up in the form of a berat. See İnalcık . Slot : –; Kermeli : –. For the Greek translation of the ahdname of Chios, see Argenti : –, –. Tournefort : . If corsairs approached, the kadi of Syros took refuge in a monastery; if the kadi was abducted, Syros islanders had to pay his ransom. Ibid.: . Cf. Kermeli : , n. .
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Sfyroeras : –. Giannoules : –; Kermeli : . Siatras : –. Kermeli : . Tourtoglou and Paparrega-Artemiade : , –. Koukou : –. Sifaniou-Karapa et al. : –. Tourtoglou –: . Tourtoglou and Paparrega-Artemiade : –. Kermeli : . The power of local custom is evident in the registration of pledging and sale of children in the Ottoman court of Crete, which was accepted by the kadi despite being against sharia law; cf. Kermeli . Gerber . For the discussion on the power of documents in the sicils, see Johansen ; Peirce ; Agmon ; Messick . Kermeli : –. Michaelaris : .
CHAPTER TWENTYFIVE
OTTOMAN WOMEN AS LEGAL AND MARITAL SUBJECTS
Başak Tuğ
B
y writing ‘her-story’, feminist historiography aimed to establish women in the historical narrative. In the s, under the influence of post-structuralism, ‘gender’ was introduced as a tool of historical analysis and as ‘the constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes’.1 Feminist history then became ‘the exposure of the often silent and hidden operations of gender that are nonetheless present and defining forces in the organization of most societies’.2 In Middle Eastern and Ottoman studies, views of Muslim women and the family were long dominated by Orientalist scholarship which essentialized Islam and Islamic law as fixed, unchanging and applicable to all historical circumstances and periods, as if surpassing all class and cultural differences. The srcinal texts of Islamic family law constructed the patriarchal family as polygamous, with women subordinated to their husbands’ will in divorce, marriage and child custody, and other matters. Moreover, nationalist and western-srcinated modernization theories created a binary opposition of tradition and modernity. This produced a homogenized imagery of the traditional Muslim family as the site of women’s subordination, in contrast to the modern idea of the family composed of citizen-subjects. Since the s, Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism, the development of social and cultural history in the field, as well as the post-structuralist and post-colonial theories’ critique of modernism have combined to challenge this homogeneous imagery and the dichotomous conception of West/East and modern/traditional. Resisting the conventional periodizations of Middle Eastern history, historians have shown that people’s social experiences do not always coincide with the political periodizations. Feminist historians have problematized existing understandings of time, interpreting the historical sources according to androcentric new methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks for uncovering gender order in a given society. Some scholars have reinterpreted old sources such as the chronicles 3 and jurisprudential literature (fıkh, and fetwas, the legal opinions of Muslim jurisconsults).4 Others have used nontraditional sources such as inheritance deeds, marriage documents, divorce decrees, petitions and travellers’ accounts to explore new ways of understanding the workings of gender dynamics in everyday life.5
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In Ottoman studies, work on court records first opened up the study of women’s and gender history. Ronald Jennings’s pioneering study of women’s status in early seventeenth-century Anatolian Kayseri revealed innumerable court cases in which women were actively involved as litigants and witnesses in property matters, inheritance, divorce and marriage.6 He argued that, contrary to the Orientalist perception of the Muslim woman as a passive subject, women in Kayseri regularly claimed their rights in court. Subsequent studies on the early modern period have identified both elite and non-elite women as economic actors who bought and sold property, owned and transferred wealth through inheritance, dower and charitable endowments, and invested in 7
and workshops, agricultural andhow commerce. Studies of Ottoman managed royal and shops, provincial elite women have alsoland shown women exercised political and economic power through household politics, as well as by controlling important resources such as tax farms and endowments and by patronizing architecture.8 THE WIFE AS LEGAL SUBJECT IN MARRIAGE
Although the economic and public participation of Ottoman women has attracted most attention for its challenge to Orientalist assumptions about Muslim women’s seclusion, feminist researchers have also used the court records, petitions and fetwas to explore women’s agency in the private sphere. Although gender inequality and male dominance did prevail in Islamic family law, through the man’s right to unilateral repudiation of marriage (talak), polygamy and concubinage, recent research on Ottoman family, marriage and divorce practices shows how women used the courts to contest this patriarchal gender order. Some women negotiated their marital rights by specifying the amount of dower (mehr) or of material support (nafaka) in marriage contracts registered in court; others inserted stipulations in the contract to restrict the husband’s unilateral right of repudiation or to obtain a divorce under specific conditions.9 Islamic law awarded a woman privileged access to property when she became a wife, specifying that, as part of her marriage contract, she should receive a dower from her husband, which would become an inalienable part of her private property untouchable by any male relative, including her husband, once she had reached legal majority.10 In Hanafi tradition and interpretation, dower was divided into two portions: the ‘immediate dower’ (mehr-i mu‘accel), payable when the marriage contract was signed, and the ‘deferred dower’ (mehr-i mü’eccel), payable on the termination of marriage, whether by death or divorce.11 Many court cases occur in which women initiated litigation against former husbands for not paying the deferred dower at the time of the man’s unilateral termination of their marriage (talak). Mid-eighteenth-century Ankara and Bursa court records 12
13 Ottoare of suchhad cases. Women received theconsummation immediate dower upon divorce if theirfull husband not paid it at also the time of the of marriage. man women often succeeded in their claims for payment of the dower.14 Juristic attention to premarital agreements brought to the fore the question of women’s consent to marriage and sexual intercourse.15 Thus, Ottoman women were able to exercise control, to a certain extent, over the choice of marriage partner, potentially being able to arrange their own marriages or to refuse a marriage arranged without their consent. The first case discussed below is that of a girl in Bursa who refuses her arranged marriage before the court when she reaches legal majority. Her case also
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allows us to explore the moral reasons behind, and the limitations on, the legal subjectivity acquired thanks to an ambiguous wifely status. Studies on various Ottoman regions also show that women were active in court in defending their marital right to maintenance (nafaka), even if it was not fixed by a marriage contract. Receiving daily maintenance from her husband was a wife’s legal right, whatever her wealth and personal income. A Muslim judge was also expected to award an appropriate level of maintenance to a woman whose husband was unable to pay it on account of his absence or for any other reason. The wife would be able to borrow the money, with the husband held liable for its subsequent repayment.16 Due to the clarity of this ruling, court records virtuallyasking throughout thetoempire of petitions – many of them successful – by women the judge award are the full main17 tenance allowance that their husbands were failing to give. Such legal ‘privileges’ distinguished Ottoman women from their counterparts in most early modern European societies, who lacked many of these legal rights, especially in property and divorce matters.18 Islamic jurisprudence endowed a Muslim woman with full legal rights which, in certain fields, were indistinguishable from those of a man. In property rights, including inheritance, a woman’s right to manage and dispose of her property was identical to those of a man, both being defined equally as an adult with full legal capacity. Furthermore, women were able to inherit family property from their male relatives, with no distinction regarding the kinds of property.19 Yet, this full legal capacity was not exempt from gender bias and discrimination. In reality, women were allowed to inherit only one-half of the share given to their male relatives. Furthermore, male heirs on the paternal side had inheritance rights which, when a related man or woman died without sons, could reduce the share of closer female relatives.20 It should also be noted that the gendered distribution of property and inheritance differed a great deal according to time and place.21 Also, women witnesses were not considered equal to men. Their testimony was either considered not acceptable at all in certain criminal cases or valued at half that of a male witness in property matters.22 Finally, female guardianship over the interests and property of minors was a hotly debated issue among Islamic schools of law, and there was no notion in favour of the equality of male and female guardianship.23 In effect, despite the theoretical existence of the adult female as a legal persona in Islamic jurisprudence, female legal identity was more often than not constructed through the status of ‘wife’ (zevce-i menkuha) of a certain man, as a ‘subject’ with certain legal rights and constraints through that status more than through any other category. By registering marriage contracts or making litigations before the Islamic court, she could claim and negotiate her marital rights to material benefits such as maintenance and dower, to choose her marital partner, or to stipulate conditions on her husband’s dutiesduties. within marriage and her right to terminate the marriage if he failed to fulfil those In this sense, paradoxically, by being subjected to the marital bond in which gender dynamics were highly patriarchal and male dominant, the Ottoman woman had the opportunity to contest and negotiate this gender order in favour of herself. The notion of ‘legal subjectivity’ to be discussed below therefore does not refer to a strictly legalistic right of being able to go to court, but is used to imply the dual nature of this position: on the one hand being subject to legal and social interventions (here, subject to patriarchal marital order), while on the other hand contesting such interventions
— Ottoman women as legal and marital subjects —
through their experience of marital subjecthood and engagement in legal processes.24 WO MEN’ S DI VO RC E
Another Orientalist stereotype about Islamic family law is the existence of an unrestricted male right of divorce. This is true in the sense that the woman does not normally have a reciprocal right to divorce in Islamic law unless there is an exceptional situation, such as impotence, blasphemy or desertion by the husband. 25 Nor does she have the right to reject her husband’s unilateral pronouncement of divorce ( talak). In this sense, Ottoman Muslim women were subject to their husband’s desire for and authority over the termination of a marriage. The husband’s only obligation was to pay his ex-wife’s deferred dower, maintenance costs during the waiting period after the divorce (iddet) and his other debts to her, if any. Since there was no legal obligation to register unilateral repudiation of the wife by her husband, we have no clear information on the frequency of talak divorce in the Ottoman empire, although its ease of use suggests a high frequency.26 There are a few examples in court records where couples registered unilateral divorce, most probably for the husband to forestall any future controversy about his obligations after the divorce.27 Some disputes were recorded over whether a divorce had actually taken place.28 Others turned on the question of whether the divorce was a male unilateral divorce, for which the husband would pay the deferred dower, or a female-initiated divorce, in which the wife forfeited her right to dower.29 Otherwise, the many litigations by ex-wives seeking the deferred dower or maintenance indicate the prevalence of male unilateral divorce in the early modern period.30 Although she could not pronounce unilateral divorce, the Muslim woman had legal means of seeking an annulment of marriage (tefrik) or even initiating a divorce with the consent of her husband (hul). Here, too, Ottoman Muslim women had a more significant legal subjectivity than did Ottoman Christian and Jewish women or European wives. Documents show that divorce was one of the most important fields in which non-Muslim women applied to Muslim courts, since Ottoman-Islamic legal practice provided more opportunities for women to initiate divorce under certain circumstances than did their own Christian or Jewish community courts. The second cluster of cases discussed below concerns the applications of Ottoman ‘deserted wives’, both Muslim and non-Muslim, to the Islamic courts for the annulment of marriage in the absence of their husbands. A woman’s opportunities for seeking divorce included, firstly, stipulations in the marriage contract that restricted the conditions under which the husband could pronounce unilateral divorce. She could also have the contract state that she would be considered divorcedanother if her husband disappeared forsupport more than a certain amount of time, if he married woman, or if he did not her properly. Blasphemy was also regarded as a harmful abuse and thus a valid ground for annulment. Some women had their husband make the pre-emptive statement before the court that his wife could be divorced from him if he did not return from a journey or military expedition within a stated length of time.31 Missing husbands and deserted wives were not uncommon in the Ottoman empire, and courts were prepared to accept desertion as a reason for lack of marital support and therefore for the annulment of marriage, despite Hanafi rules against the practice.
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Finally, before discussing specific cases, we should note the most common form of termination of marriage on the woman’s initiative. A Muslim woman had the legal right to a female-initiated or ‘woman’s divorce’ (hul) in return for compensation paid to her husband. The amount she forfeited usually involved all or a portion of the dowry, sometimes her claim to the three-month maintenance stipend payable after the divorce and to any childcare stipend. 32 Thus, she was able to initiate divorce by buying her husband’s marital rights through renouncing her own material rights, principally the dower she had obtained by getting married.33 The question of whether hul empowered Ottoman women is complex. The requirement thatand themen wife alongside should explicitly agree renounce her marital rights brought many women, them, to the to courts to register the agreement. While the husband was legally guaranteed possession of his wife’s property, the woman also obtained proof of her freedom from the marriage. This potentially enabled her to remarry, as indicated by the concentration of hul among young and newly married couples in Zilfi’s study of eighteenth-century Istanbul. 34 However, considering the severe economic sanctions imposed on women, the emancipatory power of hul is questionable.35 Furthermore, women often forfeited their material rights in order to acquire custody of their children.36 Hul certainly gave visible legal subjectivity to Ottoman Muslim women, and was the most common and frequent form of divorce encountered in the courts of Istanbul, Ankara and Bursa, Cairo, Sofia, Syria and Palestine in the eighteenth century.37 Registering hul conditions was important for both parties and consequently developed into a legal custom. While it is impossible to compare rates of hul and talak, since the latter was not often registered in court, the frequency of hul cases in court records all over the empire indicates that it was a widespread practice and the most commonly applied legal means for Ottoman women to end their marriages, albeit at a high price. The following discussion explores two more specific examples of annulment of marriage on women’s initiative. It examines, first, a girl’s petition at court for the annulment of the marriage arranged for her while still a minor and, second, lawsuits of deserted wives for the annulment of marriage while their husbands were absent. These two different forms of annulment occurred at two particular transitional moments in matrimony, the consummation of the marriage and the remarriage of the deserted wife. In both of these transitional instants, the woman’s ambiguous wifely status was the subject of public legal discussion. By engaging in the legal system and invoking the particular legal language of the court, these women acquired a particular legal subjectivity, due to their contested but still ‘wifely’ status, through which they were able to confront the given gender order. BEING A ‘VIRGIN WIFE’
On November , Emine came to the court in Bursa. She asked the court for the annulment of her marriage to Ali, who was also present in court. She declared that Elhac Bekir bin Abdullah (her legal guardian) had married her off to Ali when she was a minor by determining a deferred dower of , akçe. She indicated that she was asking for the annulment of the marriage since she had menstruated and thus reached legal majority by the time the current lawsuit was held. She announced that she immediately called witnesses to declare her menstruation and puberty as well as her
— Ottoman women as legal and marital subjects —
desire to annul the marriage without delay. When Ali, her supposed husband, rejected the annulment of marriage and the court asked for proof from Emine, she brought two witnesses from the Muslim community who gave testimony to her declaration of intention to annul the marriage on the day she menstruated and reached puberty. The case was recorded after the judge annulled the marriage legally.38 At first sight, this case would be unexceptional, at least theoretically. Islamic law gave a woman the right to annul a marriage when she reached legal majority – that is, puberty (becoming baliğ) – by asking the kadı for an annulment if her legal guardian had made a marriage contract without her consent while she was a minor. However, there certain requirements. to Islamic reached law, an her. adultIf woman had to reject were the marriage as soon as newsAccording of the arrangement she was legally a minor when married off by a guardian other than her father or paternal grandfather, then she had to apply to the court to ask for annulment without delay as soon as she reached puberty and was thus considered adult.39 This procedure, known in Islamic law as ‘the option of puberty’, was possible only once in a girl’s life, at the exact moment when she reached puberty – that is, her first menstruation.40 Finally, she had to testify to her choice of annulment before the kadı. Jurists were unequivocal in supporting a woman’s right to choose annulment as long as these conditions were fulfilled.41 Emine’s is an exceptional case, since it represents a rare example of such legal theory actually occurring in practice. Judith Tucker found no similar coming-of-age instances of annulment in the Damascus, Jerusalem or Nablus court records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although records of annulment for other reasons existed. 42 The court records from early modern Anatolia and from nineteenth-century Palestine do, however, contain a few examples of such coming-of-age annulments, of which Emine’s application is one.43 As the record shows, she carefully fulfilled all the requirements set by the jurists for an application for annulment. Of particular interest is the information this case provides concerning the legal rights of a woman over her sexuality. It demonstrates that reaching puberty was the criterion according to which woman’s sexual potential for marriage, as well as her legal majority, were determined in Islamic law.44 However, Islamic jurisprudence and the legal opinions of muftis often gave rise to ambivalence over this criterion. For example, the seventeenth-century Hanafi jurist Khayr al-Din al-Ramli left the determination of puberty to the kadı’s examination of ‘whether the girl was ready [for intercourse] by [asking] whoever raised her and from her appearance’.45 He did not specify what he meant by ‘appearance’ or what questions the kadı should ask her relatives in order to decide. Emine’s case demonstrates that the girl herself, the witnesses from the community and the judge all agreed that a female reaches puberty when there is an obvious bodily sign – that is, menstruation – which would make her sexually able to reproduce. Another aspect of Islamic law concerning a female’s rights following puberty arises from the fact that a woman’s ‘delivery’ or ‘surrender’ to her husband – i.e., the consummation of marriage – was often delayed till her legal majority, even if the marriage contract had been made earlier. Hence, the category of ‘virgin wife’ was possible in practice. Even if the girl was married off as a minor, she could stay with her family until she reached puberty. The legal implication of such a principle was to grant the married ‘virgin’ girl the right to reject the marriage on attaining her legal majority. The social connotation was to allow the girl to preserve her virginity until she reached puberty
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in a society where virginity was considered to be of great value, in both financial and moral terms. Moreover, society was preserved from the danger of ‘illicit’ offspring if, in the end, the marriage was to be annulled. Consent to marriage was therefore crucial, and coercion would invalidate the marriage in normative Islamic law. Although the requirement of ‘ownership of self’ (malakat nafsiha) for an adult female was acknowledged by all the schools of Islamic law, the question of whether an adult virgin had sufficient maturity and therefore the right to consent to her marriage was not agreed by all doctrines. 46 The Hanafi doctrine, which the Ottomans officially adopted, accepted that being of legal age or reaching puberty allowed a female, either virgin or not, to ‘own herself’, at least in terms of approving a marriage. The virgin wife’s in-between status of being married but a virgin gave her a legal subjectivity – i.e., agency as well as subjection – for two interdependent reasons. First, she acquired a legal majority and subjectivity through her ‘individual’ or ‘sexual’ body. Only through employing this legal majority could she annul a marriage arranged for her. Second, and more important, she also had a legal self due to her ambiguous wifely status, which situated her in a socially dangerous domain with regard to the sexual order, potentially on the borderline between the licit and the illicit. This can be termed the ‘social body’ of the early-modern woman. This ‘social body’ subjected her to patriarchal interventions but also enabled her, as a legal subject, to refuse the consummation of her marriage in the legal sphere. Having reached puberty and become sexually viable and responsible, she was henceforth capable of being the active subject of an illicit relationship. Yet, she became more viable and responsible than an unmarried adult virgin, since she had to preserve her virginity for her ‘real’ husband while reaching puberty as a wife. As Leslie Peirce has shown, a female attained ‘social’ maturity through marriage even if she attained physical majority through puberty: ‘the scaffolding of social controls around the female began with marriage rather than with the achievement of physical maturation’.47 Emine’s status as a sexually potent ‘virgin wife’ potentially threatened the established gender order. When she reached puberty, her virginity had to be preserved for Ali until the marriage was actually consummated. We do not know if she wished to marry someone else in her neighbourhood. She could have been married off to Ali by her legal guardian to get the immediate dower, since the amount was usually paid directly to the guardian. Alternatively, she or her family might have made a new agreement with another man afterwards to obtain a better dower or for some other reason.48 There is a surprising number of court cases in eighteenth-century Ankara and Bursa records in which ‘potential wives’ were accused by their fiancés of refraining from marrying and ‘surrendering’ themselves to their future husbands.49 In two of these examples, the girls explicitly declared their desire to of marry the reason for their resistance. The marriage contract of one thesesomeone girls to else her asbeloved was actually finalized in the lawsuit where her ex-fiancé accused her of refusing to marry him.50 If Emine wished to end her marriage to Ali for the sake of another person, there was the risk of having illicit intercourse with that person. Losing her virginity would provide an obvious sign of adultery and easily lead to charges of fornication ( zina). It is precisely on account of all these social and moral factors that the ‘virgin wife’, ironically, acquired a public voice over her sexuality in this borderline status. 51 She could – in fact, must – publicly mention that she was menstruating and get others to testify
— Ottoman women as legal and marital subjects —
of her sexual condition in court. Following this declaration, she could then obtain the right not to surrender herself to her husband. The virgin wife’s body thus became a sign of her sexual and, therefore, marital rights. DESERTED WIFE DESIRING TO REMARRY
On December , the Ankara court heard a lawsuit initiated by a woman called Meryem bint Abdurrahman, who made a complaint against some of the inhabitants of her neighbourhood for preventing her from remarrying.52 My husband, Ali ibn Abdullah, went to another town seven years ago. Mehmed and Mustafa from the Nefiscik village of Ankara told me that my husband had passed away four years ago in Bursa. However, when I wanted to marry myself to another [man], some of the inhabitants of my neighbourhood of Alibey intervened and assaulted me (dahl ve taarruz iderler). I ask the court to enjoin them from intervening and to dismiss their dispute. The court accepted Meryem’s plea, citing the following fetva in Arabic: ‘Should one or two from among the trusted [ones] advise her on her husband’s repudiation or death for certain, she would be allowed to marry another man/husband when her waiting period is over’.53 A very similar case appears in the Ankara court records in November , with only two differences. First, the woman who applied to the shari‘a court was non-Muslim, an Armenian called Marta. Second, Marta claimed that her husband, Ohannes, who had deserted her by going to another town five years before, had divorced her in Kütahya six months before the court hearing. She declared that Elhac Ali and another Ohannes, who were friends of her husband, had come and reported that her husband had divorced her. As in the previous example, she asked the court to stop the interventions of ‘some of the inhabitants of her neighbourhood’ in her marrying ‘another one’. She added that there was no obstacle to her marriage, since the authorized period of waiting after the divorce (iddet) had ended. In this case, too, the court decided in favour of the woman with reference to the same fetva.54 As women deserted by their husbands, Meryem and Marta were not exceptions in early modern Ottoman society. Constant wars dragged men from their homes, requiring them to spend long periods on military expeditions with almost no communication with their families. War could also provide an opportunity for a man to avoid his family responsibilities or an unwanted marriage.55 Not infrequently some of these men, whether intentionally or not, left their wives without any resources, and the latter had then petition the courts for financial support, requesting for their children and to themselves, especially when a certain period of time hadalimony passed after 56 husbands’ disappearance. Yet, it would be incorrect to think the issue of desertion was always related to male ‘irresponsibility’. Inevitably, many men died in these military expeditions. Other principal reasons for travel, and therefore for absentee husbands, were commerce and pilgrimage.57 Their wives also went to court, knowing, predicting or even pretending that their husbands were dead.58 Ayşe claimed at the Ankara court in February that her husband, Abdülkerim Beşe, had died on the way back from the ‘Nemçe expedition’
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(the Austro-Ottoman war of –), for which he had departed seven years earlier, declaring that his friends had informed her of his death. She, too, complained of the neighbours who had attempted to hinder her from marrying someone else. Whether her husband had actually died or not, the time which had passed between the conclusion of the war in and the date Ayşe applied to the court () was certainly long enough for her to believe that he would not return. Another woman, Alime, also applied to the Ankara court in January for permission to remarry, five years after her husband went on the ‘eastern expedition’ (against Iran) and died there.59 Similarly, a Christian woman called Bese60 applied to the Ankara court to enable her to marrya another man, that she hadtravelling heard thatonher husband had died in Çıbıkabad, sub-district of claiming Ankara, while he was business to collect mar61 row. The example of Bese and the previously mentioned lawsuit of Marta show that non-Muslim deserted wives came to the Islamic courts, too, and asked the court to prevent neighbours from intervening in their second marriages. It is now well known that Christian and Jewish women sometimes registered their marriages and divorces in Islamic courts, since they could avail themselves of the relative ease of Islamic rules in seeking divorce and getting a dower on annulment of the marriage, which was not possible under Orthodox Christian or Jewish law. Yet, the issue here is not whether Jewish or Christian law was more repressive than Islamic law in terms of women’s rights, but rather the common patriarchal culture which did not easily allow these women to remarry.62 The main question is not the reasons behind the disappearance of the husbands, but the reasons behind the deserted women’s applications to the court. All these women went to court in order to be freed from their ambiguous wifely status so that they were able to remarry. This status, being still married but without a husband present and desiring to marry again, placed the deserted wife in a contested domain in terms of gender norms and opened a door to social scrutiny by the community. The phenomenon of ‘community interference’ in these deserted women’s remarriages indicates another aspect to the problem of contested wifehood. Only by invoking certain legal means and language were deserted wives able to terminate their previous conjugal obligations before the community. The formulaic language in which the above-mentioned cases were recorded suggests that citing neighbour ‘intervention and assault’ (dahl ve taarruz) may have been a legal scenario or pretext required to register with the court a woman’s application to remarry. However, in Islamic law it was not obligatory to register a marriage itself in court, and people in the Ottoman empire rarely did so. These court records bear no resemblance to a marriage contract, nor do any of them end with a marriage agreement after the court had freed the woman from her previous marriage. The name of the candidate husband is never mentioned; he istherefore, referred tothat only as the ‘other’ ( ahir) whom the woman wanted to marry. It is clear, registering the second marriage was not the issue at stake. Nevertheless, women still applied to the court to obtain notarized registration of the fact that their first marriage had been terminated, as a result either of the husband’s death or of his unilateral divorce pronounced in the absence of the wife. The first reason for registering annulment in court is probably the popular knowledge that Ottoman courts in Anatolia allowed such annulment, contrary to strict Hanafi rules. Second, it seems that registering and obtaining approval of female-initiated divorces
— Ottoman women as legal and marital subjects —
and annulments in court was a customary legal practice, due to the extraordinary nature of such divorces compared to the usual unrestricted, male unilateral divorce. Finally, registering annulment of her first marriage might be to a woman’s advantage in avoiding current or future controversies about a second marriage. Examining the fetvas used in the Ankara court to legitimate the annulment of deserted wives’ marriages gives us some clues about how Hanafi jurists and judges found a way around their stringent doctrine concerning women’s right of annulment in case of the disappearance of the husband. Strictly speaking, the Hanafi doctrine differed from other Islamic schools of law in not accepting the disappearance or desertion 63
of husband asHanafi a valid cause the twelfth annulment of marriage. Onlywoman’s al-Marghinani, thethe authoritative jurist for of the century, accepted the ‘receiving reliable notice’ of her husband’s death or of his divorcing her as a valid cause and thus opened up a venue for women to seek annulment on the grounds of ‘hearsay’.64 Such cases did, however, constitute a somewhat unusual situation in Hanafi doctrine. Selma Zecˇević’s work on eighteenth-century Ottoman Bosnia suggests that Muslim judges and jurists tended to deny the deserted wife the right to remarry.65 Yet the fetvas used in Ankara courts facilitating women’s obtaining annulment, and the presence of plenty of examples of deserted wives obtaining annulment in other Anatolian courts proves the opposite for Ottoman Anatolia.66 The srcin of the fetva in Arabic that was repeatedly referred to in the Ankara court is unclear. It is possible that it was borrowed from a non-Hanafi school of jurisprudence. Ottoman subjects and judges made frequent use of the plurality of the Ottoman legal system and went ‘forum shopping’ between different courts, muftis and doctrines to get more favourable results. In seventeenth-century Syria, the annulment of deserted wives’67marriages was based on Hanbali or Shafi‘i rulings, rather than the strict Hanafi one. Yet, another fetva brought by a deserted wife to the Ankara court can be traced to a fetva of the şeyhülislam (chief mufti) Çatalcalı Ali Efendi (d. ), and was therefore clearly a Hanafi ruling. As in the previous examples, Ayşe applied to the Ankara court in July complaining about her neighbours intervening in her attempt to remarry after she heard that her husband, who had previously left her, had divorced her six months previously.68 Here, the court records refer not to an anonymous fetva selected by the judge to legitimize his decision, but to a different two-part fetva that Ayşe herself had submitted. If Hind marries Beşir, believing Amr and Bekir who have told her that her husband Zeyd who had already left for another town has divorced her there, does the kadı of the town in which Hind has married Beşir have the right to annul the marriage claiming that the divorce did not take place before him? Answer: He does not. In [her that case, are any of the inhabitants of Hind’s allowedAnswer: to dispute marriage] claiming that they did not hearneighbourhood Zeyd’s repudiation? They are not.69 The first part of this fetva indicates that, in opposition to strict Hanafi rules but in line with al-Marghinani’s opinion, the mufti is able to facilitate a woman’s remarriage by accepting her good faith in ‘believing’ reliable hearsay relating to her husband’s repudiation or death. The mufti thus helped prevent both the kadı and the neighbours from jeopardizing her remarriage.
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Judges and muftis in Anatolia therefore seem to have been prepared to find a way around the strict Hanafi rule. Just as circumstantial evidence was accepted as proof of fornication in the old Ottoman criminal code and legal practice, ‘hearing by word of mouth’ was considered valid testimony, and was the most basic component of evidence in Ottoman court practice. The court did require the woman to name as witnesses those who had informed her of her husband’s death or divorce. However, these men were probably not actually present in court, and it was sufficient to register the names of these informants in the court records. 70 This implies that calling witnesses was no more than a procedural detail in such cases. Registering onlegal the wife’s own initiative in herdid husband’s absence appearsthe to annulment have becomeofamarriage customary procedure. Since women not normally have the right to initiate a unilateral divorce in Islamic law, getting the approval of the court in such extraordinary circumstances seems to have become important and in some degree necessary. ‘Woman’s divorce’ (hul) was generally registered in court in the presence of both parties in order to fix the agreement arrived at for future reference. The second marriages of some assumed widows were also recorded in the court registers, adjacent to their previous ‘woman’s divorce’, as proof of their being widowed with no obstacle to remarriage.71 The deserted wife’s application for annulment was in itself a kind of female-initiated divorce, a unilateral woman’s divorce with an absentee husband. Thus, she might have been obliged to register in court the termination of her marriage, given that it had not ended in a mutual agreement between her and her husband, as was the case with hul, the regular ‘woman’s divorce’. Moreover, having notarized proof of being freed from the first marriage was probably important in order for the deserted wife to avoid future controversy should her first husband return and claim that he had not divorced her.72 There is occasional evidence of an ex-husband opposing his ex-wife’s remarriage in the absence of a registration of the ‘woman’s divorce’ concluded between them beforehand. For example, when Elhac Ahmed, S¸erife Ayşe’s father, accused es-Seyyid Ali Çelebi, his daughter’s ex-husband, of not allowing her to remarry, the latter admitted that they had had a woman’s divorce in front of witnesses and that he had waived his marital rights over her.73 In a similar case of ‘interference’ by the husband, the woman needed to bring witnesses to the ‘woman’s divorce’ which they had concluded five and a half months earlier, in which she had renounced her right to the dower.74 Only after this testimony did the court allow her to remarry. Thus, applying to court and getting its approval, both of the annulment and of the prospective marriage, was to the woman’s advantage in preventing future disputes with her ex-husband, his family or the community. This was especially so if she claimed that her husband had divorced her while away from home. Finally,approval we mustfor askannulment why, if theand deserted wife was using the court get notarized remarriage, themerely court would make up atoscenario of ‘intervention and assault’ by the neighbours. From the formulaic phrasing that ‘some of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood’ had ‘intervened’ in the woman’s affairs, it is difficult to assess the probability and possible causes of such interventions. The two-part fetva Ayşe submitted to the Ankara court indicates that the problem was not only the potential obstacle presented by strict Hanafi doctrine. The second part of the fetva reveals concern about community intervention in her remarriage through claims that the repudiation of her ex-husband was not witnessed, and therefore not
— Ottoman women as legal and marital subjects —
accepted, by the community. Even if the second question was also a legal scenario prepared by the mufti in answer to a generic question, the formulation of Ayşe’s case and others as complaints against neighbours’ or community intervention in the remarriage of the deserted wife, supported by such a fetva, reveal that ‘intervention and assault’ was a possible and serious scenario. The construction of the community as a legitimate and concerned party in deserted wives’ cases thus reflects acknowledgement of the fact that the community would have concerns about the remarriage of deserted wives. What would be the sources of and reasons for such ‘interventions and assaults’? The foremost intervention would, of course, come from family members of the absentee husband livingtheinabsentee the samehusband neighbourhood. as the woman might difficulties with after her Just remarriage, she might alsohave havefuture continuing problems with his family on account of rights and obligations stemming from her former wifely status. Custody of children could be the first controversial issue. However, there are few court applications by deserted wives for alimony for their children, and no controversy about children due to the remarriage of the deserted wife can be traced in Ankara court records. In the absence of clues about children, the most important disputed area seems to be financial. In Islamic jurisprudence, the property of a missing man was safeguarded under the supervision of a legal guardian. His property could not be sold or divided between his relatives until his death was established, although a part of his property could be given as alimony to the abandoned wife as long as they were still considered married.75 Only when the death of the missing man was established would his wife have a right to her deferred dower as well as the part she inherited from her deceased husband. In Alime’s case, the news of her husband’s death on the military expedition to Iran came from her father-in-law,76 but the wording of the court record still bans the neighbours’ intervention in her remarriage. Her deceased husband’s family might still have interfered in her new marriage, intending to remarry her to one of their male relatives so as not to lose the family property that she would have inherited from their son. The practice of marrying a widowed woman to her deceased husband’s brother was common. Otherwise, the family would lose both the immediate dower paid on marriage and the deferred dower paid when the husband died or divorced his wife. Even if, for some reason, her husband or his family had not paid either of these, her marrying another man would most probably bring this matter before the law courts. However, in none of the cases examined here is there any financial agreement reached between the widowed/deserted wife and her husband’s family that resembles those found in ‘woman’s divorce’. Yet, her missing husband’s family might still have tried to compel her to forfeit her rights to property, custody and childcare stipends if she wanted to this sense,might applying the court to alegitimize onpart the in basis of aremarry. previousInannulment havetobeen in itself tactic on remarriage the woman’s order not to lose the economic power obtained from her widowhood. By getting the court’s notification of the annulment of her first marriage, the deserted wife has proof that there is nothing to forfeit in order to remarry. Alime’s own family or her husband’s family might also have wanted to prevent her from getting married again for purely moral reasons, believing that their daughter or daughter-in-law’s marriage to someone else, even though her husband had died, would tarnish the moral reputation of their family. In Alime’s case, the woman’s claim
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that her husband was dead could not be doubted when her father-in-law was the informant. However, in cases where the death or repudiation of the missing husband was still uncertain, for a woman to take such an initiative in order to remarry when she was supposedly still married to her missing husband could itself have been considered a threat to the patriarchal gender order. One would normally expect that the community would have encouraged the remarriage of deserted wives in order to terminate the social and moral responsibilities that they would otherwise bear. However, a deserted wife who remarried could have been regarded as adulterous by the community because, in their eyes, she was still married to her absentee husband. Itwith is notother difficult imagine some were of these women did establish new relationships men to when their that husbands absent for long periods. The intervention complained of in the court records could well have been real, and related to community surveillance of these women’s private lives. Neighbourly intervention would then concern the disgraceful existence of the ‘adulterous’ wife rather than a wish to hinder her from remarrying. Applying to the court was the means by which the deserted wife could not only free herself from the previous marriage but also clear her reputation and legalize her new relationship in the eyes of the community. Finally, the presence of the deserted wife alone in court, litigating against the family or neighbours, had in itself the potential to disturb the gender order in which the public sphere was mostly considered to be a male domain. Even in a female-initiated divorce case, the woman came to court together with her husband. A woman’s appearance in court as a litigant on her own initiative and alone was in itself a manifestation of her agency as a legal subject, one which would threaten the social order even if she were applying for a legitimate cause – that is, a new marriage. CONCLUSION
There is no way of knowing the actual intentions and motivations behind the applications to the court of deserted and ‘virgin’ wives except what is recorded in brief legalistic formulas. As discussed above, we do not know precisely why the court formulated an apparent application for annulment as a complaint against ‘interventions and assaults’ of neighbours. It is also uncertain whether the ‘virgin wife’ came to court freely, on her own initiative, to terminate the marriage previously arranged for her, or if her family or others were behind the whole scenario. The alternative possibilities presented here remain conjecture. What we do know is that all of these wives applied to the court in order to negotiate their legal right to annulment of a marriage under certain conditions, and that most of them left court cleared of wifely status, albeit most probably to become again.and Their marital status provided withthat a legal subjectivity, with all its wives constraints possibilities, to contest andthem confirm marital status, and thus gender order in an early modern society. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century reform of Islamic law in many Middle Eastern countries, including the Ottoman empire, focused especially on divorce laws. In order to balance male unilateral right of divorce, reformers expanded women’s divorce rights by proliferating and facilitating the conditions under which women could initiate annulment or termination of a marriage.77 For example, the Ottoman Law of Family Rights of included the absence of a husband for more than five years as a legiti
— Ottoman women as legal and marital subjects —
mate ground among the conditions for seeking an annulment in court. 78 The turbulent history of the final Ottoman decades, in which husbands left their wives behind because of constant wars, made this codification unavoidable. Yet, Ottoman women’s contestations and struggles to obtain annulment in courts in the early modern period might also have contributed to the codification of this right for the benefit of their grand-daughters. NOTES
Scott . : –, esp. . Ibid.: For such studies, see Zilfi ; Peirce ; Marsot . Above all, Tucker . See essays in Sonbol and Zilfi . Jennings . Gerber : –; Tucker ; Faroqhi a, a, ; Marcus ; Meriwether , ; Fay . Peirce ; Fay ; Hathaway ; Marsot ; Artan a. See Meriwether and Tucker : –; Fay : –; Tucker : –, –. Tucker : –. Tucker : ; Imber b; –. E.g., Ankara Court Records [ACR], (–): , ; Bursa Court Records [BCR], B (–): , ; B (–): A–B/; B (–): A–B/. Agmon : –, –. Abdal-Rehim : –; Peirce : –; Tucker : –. Tucker : –. Ibid.: –, –; Tucker : –. Tucker : –; Tucker : –. Erickson ; Wiesner : –. However, both works reveal that property and other rights within marriage differed in the reality of European women’s lives from the strict interpretation of common law. Tucker : –. Ibid.: . Compare Doumani and Peirce : –. For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see Tucker : –. See Meriwether , ; Tucker : –. Here I borrow the approach to experience and subjectivity in Canning . Not all schools of Islamic law regard desertion by the husband as a legitimate reason for annulment. As shown below, the Hanafi doctrine adopted by the Ottomans does not accept it. On the forms of unilateral divorce in Islamic jurisprudence and its frequency in the Ottoman empire, see Tucker : –, –. Tucker : . Tucker : –. BCR, B: . Peirce : –; Tucker : –; Tucker : –. Peirce : ; Tucker : . Zilfi : . For the jurisprudential bases of such a contractual agreement and the necessity of the husband’s consent, see Tucker : –. Zilfi : ; Peirce : . Tucker : . Peirce : –.
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Zilfi ; Tug ˘ ; Abdal-Rehim ; Ivanova ; Tucker : –. BCR, B: . Jurists took different positions on who could be the legal guardian of a minor girl for marriage – her father, her paternal grandfather in a father’s absence, or any legal guardian. See Sonbol : –; Tucker : –; Yazbak : –; Tucker : –, . Yazbak : –. Tucker : . Ibid.: . Yazbak : –, gives only two specific examples of such coming-of-age applications for annulment from nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine, while suggesting that court records contain ‘many more’ such cases. Agmon : –, provides one example from nineteenthcentury Haifa. Jennings : , cites one case in early seventeenth-century Kayseri court records. According to Leslie Peirce, sixteenth-century Aintab court records also contain a couple of marriage termination cases (personal communication). For the socio-sexual implications of legal and physical maturity in Ottoman legal practice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Peirce : –. Khayr al-Din ibn Ahmad al-Ramli, Kitab al-Fatawa al-Kubra li-Naf‘al-Birriya, vols in (Cairo, Bulaq): –, as quoted in Tucker : –. Shafi‘is and Malikis gave full authority to the legal guardian to marry off even the adult virgin, since they considered a previous marriage essential for ‘owning oneself’ (Sonbol : ). Peirce : –, esp. . For such an example, see Yazbak : . See, for example, Yagob’s complaint of Ehsabaret, his fiancée (ACR : ); Bayeziddin Musa’s application to marry Emine, his fiancée, who resists him (ACR, (–): ); Hüseyin bin Yusuf’s application for freeing Emine, his ex-fiancée, who does not want to marry him (ACR : ); Osman’s complaint against Fatime, his fiancée (ACR : ). ACR : ; ACR : . In conclusion of at histhe article on minor marriagesgirl (: –), Yazbak highlights the modernthe reader’s surprise openness of a Muslim in mentioning her menstruation publicly in nineteenth-century Palestine. ACR : . Ibid. The fetva was quoted as a sentence, not in the usual question and answer form. I would like to thank M. Sait Özervarlı for help in translating this Arabic fetva. ACR : . For a similar interesting example from France, see Davis . Peirce : –. On desertion and its possible reasons, see Araz –: –; Peirce : ; Zec ˇevic´ : . Araz (–) implies that women generally ‘pretended’ their husbands were dead by juxtaposing in his article such applications with the court records in which recently returned husbands petitioned for their remarried wives. However, other court records confirm that some of these women’s husbands had died on campaign and never returned. ACR (–): . Bese is a Kurdish name. As she was married to an Armenian (Nersis), she might have been a Christian Kurd or˘lua Christian, probably Armenian, with Kurdish name.this I would Lerna Ekmekçiog and Zeynep Türkyılmaz for help in aunderstanding case. like to thank ACR : . On Ottoman non-Muslims’ use of Islamic courts, especially on family matters, see al-Qattan ; Baer : –; Gradeva ; Jennings . Araz –: –; Imber b: . Schacht (: ) does not list ‘[husband] deserting wife’ among the reasons that the wife can seek dissolution of her marriage in court. In the case of disappearance, Hanafis accepted only the actual death of the missing husband as a valid cause, and even here prescribed waiting at least for a lifetime of his male peers, or approximately
— Ottoman women as legal and marital subjects —
a hundred years, before terminating the marriage in court. The Maliki, Hanbali, Shafi‘i and Shi‘i doctrines agreed, with slight differences, that a deserted wife could remarry after a waiting period of four years as long as there was no news of her husband. Cf. Aydın : ; Tucker : –; Zecˇevic´ : –. Tucker : . Zecˇevic´ : –. See also Araz –. Tucker : –; Tucker : –. ACR : . Ibid.; the fetva is identified in Araz –: , n. , re Çatalcalı Ali Efendi : .
These informants notfive be witnesses considered as witnesses the cases formal proceedings of Islamic law. Thecould four or listed under theaccording record fortosuch appear to have been there purely for procedural purposes and did not testify to the woman’s reputation or anything else specific to this case. The same two men served as witnesses in both Meryem’s and Marta’s cases (ACR : and ACR : respectively) within two months in in the Ankara court. Trabzon Court Record, /– (year /), cases –, – and –, as quoted and transcribed in Çetinkaya : –, –. Various ‘return of Martin Guerre’ scenarios appear in such cases; cf. Davis . ACR : . ACR : . Zecˇ evic´ : –. ACR : . On reform of divorce laws in the Middle East, see Tucker : –. Ibid.: .
CHAPTER TWENTYSIX
FORMS AND FORUMS OF EXPRESSION Istanbul and beyond, –
Tülay Artan
L
ate eighteenth-century Ottoman history has conventionally portrayed Selim III (–) as the reforming sultan who undertook to modernize – or Europeanize – all military, administrative and economic affairs. Paradoxically, however, new research shows him to have been surrounded and guided by reformers of Islam, in particular by followers of the Nakşibendiyye–Müceddidiyye sufi order, which stood for strict adherence to the sharia and the tenets of Sunni Islam, as well as their quite controversial Mevlevi or Melâmi allies.1 During the eighteenth century a serious agenda of renewal and reform in Islamic thought seems to have emerged both at the centre and in the provinces, extending to attempts at coming to terms with modern state formation.2 Much has been written about how, in traditional agrarian societies, virtually all social and political conflicts tended to be played out through religion. 3 Ottomanists, too, have noted how, when economic, military and political disasters tended to dovetail into a cultural crisis and hence a crisis of the elite, the Ottoman solution was always sought in piety or calls for a return to a ‘pure’ religion.4 How then are we to interpret the influence of reformers of Islam upon Selim III’s new political order? Behind the contentious history of eighteenth-century reformists in Istanbul, there lurks the prolonged seventeenth-century conflict between sufis and the radical, often violently puritan, preachers inspired by a certain Kadızade Mehmed (d. ), a group characterized as a major component of the ‘long seventeenth century’ Ottoman crisis. From the s to the s there were fierce quarrels between the fundamentalists and their adversaries, fuelled especially by the Kadızadelis’ hostility to what they 5 The aftermath regarded as anti-sharia innovations suchconfrontation as smoking, or drinking into coffeetheoreighteenth wine, and to sufi rituals. of this continued century. Yet, it did not amount to a complete polarization between two mutually exclusive parties, for, while sufis did defend their rites and ways, at least some of them also nurtured a certain degree of admiration for their opponents’ strength of faith. In campaigning to restore Islam to its uncorrupted form as in the age of the Prophet, the Kadızadelis had turned to Birgivi Mehmed Efendi (d. ) and his Tarikat-ı Muhammediyye. Among those who penned positive commentaries on Birgivi’s
— Forms and forums of expression —
Tarikat were prominent sufis such as ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. ) of Damascus, Muhammed Emin et-Tokadi (d. ) of Istanbul and Ebu Said el-Hadimi (d. ) of Konya, all of whom followed the Nakşibendi sufi path, and might therefore be ranked as among the predecessors of late eighteenth-century reformers. Birgivi’s Tarikat was also recommended to Selim III’s nizâm-ı cedid (‘new order’) soldiers in the s, and with new commentaries was regularly published at the Mühendishane printing house after .6 There was a considerable degree of conservatism in even the most liberal Muslim and sufi thinkers of the eighteenth century. Just as it was hardly possible for
Ottoman to think could whollyuphold outsideany or without to thebysharia, equally nopolicymakers Islamic intellectual idea of reference change except representing himself as a staunch defender of the faith. A case in point concerns the considerable legacy within the Ottoman reform party of the Indian scholar Şeyh Ahmed al-Sirhindi (d. ) – a contemporary of Kadızade Mehmed. For his emphasis on rejuvenating Islam and opposing heterodoxy, Sirhindi was proclaimed ‘renewer [müceddid] of the second [Islamic] millennium’; his followers, known as müceddidis (‘renewers’), were committed to the orthodox canon.7 Sirhindi’s Ottoman followers, the Nakşibendiyye–Müceddidiyye mentioned above, began to acquire political influence both at court and in the provinces in the later seventeenth century. 8 Muhammed Murad Buhari (d. ), a disciple of Sirhindi’s son and successor Muhammad Ma’sum (d. ), introduced the order from Damascus to Istanbul through visits of varying duration to the capital between and ; other branches of Sirhindi’s disciples also carried his teachings from Mecca to Anatolia and then to Istanbul. Buhari (also known as Muradi) made the greatest impact, being favourably received among the upper classes, including by the foremost representatives of the later Kadızadelis, among them Mustafa II’s notorious şeyhülislam Feyzullah Efendi (d. ). The eighteenth-century chronicler Uşşakizade even reports that Feyzullah regarded Mustafa II (–) himself as a müceddidi and praised him for turning away from frivolity, leisure and pleasure. 9 Support probably also came from Ahmed III (–), for, despite Feyzullah Efendi’s execution in , the order was able to secure a permanent presence at the Ottoman court. 10 With Buhari’s first visit to the capital, a convent frequented by his adherents emerged in the Nişanca quarter of Eyüb, a popular settlement among the Nakşibendis. 11 Not only centrally positioned ulema but also prominent sufis in the provinces (such as al-Nabulusi) were well connected to these müceddidi pioneers.12 Sirhindi’s followers in Istanbul became involved in political strife as early as .13 Although Buhari’s growing influence at court incurred the emnity of the grand vezir Çorlulu Paşa and resulted in exileSeyyid in Bursa and , also came to countAli Şeyhülislâm Paşmakçızade Alibetween Efendi (in office , he – and –) among his disciples.14 The reigning sultan, Ahmed III, in contrast to his subsequent image as the decadent ruler, was often blamed by his contemporaries for blindly following the religious zealotry of his entourage. He had been surrounded by orthodox (and mostly explicitly Kadızadeli) ulema since early childhood. Buhari’s adherents and other disciples of Sirhindi continued to exercise influence among grand vezirs, bureaucrats and palace officials throughout the eighteenth century. By this time the Kadızadelis had retreated in court circles. Although they were still a significant
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force in the provinces, here, too, the centre reasserted its influence mostly through its Nakşibendiyye–Müceddidiyye adherents.15 In the later eighteenth century both sufis and ulema seem to have been using Sirhindi’s ideas to underpin their initiatives.16 Included in their agenda were elements pointing towards land privatization, a locally commercialized and monetized economy, the formation of a new and more capitalistic urban elite, and the progressive reintegration of the provinces into a recentralized political order. The paradox is that, while supporting measures of adaptation to the challenges of modernity, together or overlapping with the Kadızadelis, Sirhindi’s followers, too, attacked many practices among Muslims as un-Islamic. with their modernizing Ottoman Müceddidiyye remained Together opposed to innovation in religion,proclivities, as well as tothe indulging in worldly pleasures. In this uncertain context, forms and forums of social, political and cultural expression came to frame and embody a prolonged struggle over control of the public sphere. They were manifested in often unprecedented ways and left diverse records, in spheres ranging from court rituals through fashion to the arts. 17 Particularly significant is the occurrence of first-person narratives, a rarity in Ottoman culture. 18 Leading sufis’ personal journals, letters, diaries and dreamlogs, reflecting their hopes, enmities or social concerns, become especially noteworthy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.19 Muslim and non-Muslim authors who wrote for themselves may have been driven to record local events by a sense of living in insecure times. 20 Recent studies on poetry and music also suggest that at this time important changes were taking place in the cultural identity of the elite. Likewise, visual documentation, marked by a shift from dynastic representations to genre painting, is exceptionally abundant for this period, and presents a wealth of information also about the daily lives of commoners. There are, of course, serious questions about how this material should be interpreted. Often, the same piece of information appears to cut both (or more) ways; there emerge nearly as many histories as historians. Moreover, a certain source can provide information on not just one but many things, as a result of which the same sources keep cutting across (discussions of) various spheres of life. In some cases, undue attention has been paid to just a single piece of evidence. All these factors lead to difficulties of organization, in presenting combined, intertwining and interacting processes. In what follows, I shall begin with space and concepts of privacy; try to find my way through different forms of Ottoman urban space in this period, reserving early judgement on the extent to which they may be qualified as public or not; and conclude with the question of women. AP PRO AC HE S TO PUBLIC SPAC E: FRO M TH EO RIE S TO UNEASY COUNTERPARTS A lively interest in the Habermasian concept of public space has led Ottomanists to inquire into the collective urban experience, with particular reference to coffee-houses and public gardens. Public and private lives, the limits of which are often defined through architectural terminology such as thresholds, ceilings or walls, have always been regarded as attached to and anchored in space. In the Ottoman context, as a first approximation, ‘indoors’ has come to stand for private activities (including women)
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and ‘outdoors’ for activities in public space (excluding women), though these should be taken not as opposite poles but as positions on a continuous scale. In an earlier study on the new genre painting of early eighteenth-century Istanbul, I attempted to elaborate the boundaries between the individual and the society of which he or she is part.21 Identifying ‘amm(e) and hass(a), terms used in the court registers (sicils) of the period, as referring respectively to the public and non-public (i.e., formal or authorized, and referring mostly to the privileged and therefore restricted), I suggested that the intimate physical and emotional space into which civil or religious authorities could not intrude should be regarded as private. I became aware of the possibility of suchofprivacies occurring within the Examples public sphere and, simultaneously, about violations privacy in non-public zones. of the latter are closes or blind alleys, where neighbours’ paths would frequently cross and familiarity would make inroads into privacy. I therefore hypothesized a third area between the public and the private, an intermediate sphere where boundaries between the individual and society tended to blur. Several historians who have used court registers to examine the lives of provincial men and women from an Ottoman legal perspective have attempted to define privacy as framed by a given social order and by reference to social class.22 Most recently, a gendered reading of the problem has been provided, arguing that the boundary between public and private depended on, and shifted with, gender status instead of applying equally to all individuals.23 Hence privacy, a concept for which no specific term exists in Arabic (the language of Islamic-Ottoman legal texts), has come to be defined by female chastity and seclusion from non-family men, as well as by inclusion in or exclusion from the family as a means of social control. One point emphasized immediately by these debates is that we cannot simply apply modern (or European/western) notions of public and private to Ottoman (or Islamic, or perhaps any non-western, pre-modern) society. The search for correspondences between theoretical notions and practical examples has led historians to consider a series of Ottoman spaces which, seen up close, blur into ambiguous zones where the public and the private overlap. In addition to coffee-houses and so-called public gardens, key examples are public baths, where men and women did not meet, but which yet represented some kind of crossover for each sex; barber-shops doubling as medical shops; and marketplaces and a variety of places for eating out. To what extent did these constitute forms and manifestations of a public space that was genuinely increasing and expanding in a fashion comparable to European developments? It is crucial to note that, in the West, public spaces were meant not only to accommodate a politicized community and its collective decisions, reason and rationality, 24 but also a sphere of fluid and polymorphous sociability, play and ritual. 25 Did comparable Ottoman spaces of heterogeneous coexistence embody a new as kind of social conduct and a new civility towards strangers? Were they recognized markers of publicness? Furthermore, to what extent were women and non-Muslims present – or mixed-sex encounters and interconfessional mingling encouraged – in such places? One way to understand ‘new’ styles of interaction and dialogue would be to look into the definition of the uncivilized ways (or deviations from the norm) which came to be recorded in this period.26
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COFFEEHOUSES, SPECIALIZATION, GENTRIFICATION
Following the European voyages of discovery, hugely increased flows of tea, coffee, cocoa and sugar became key components of the new Atlantic economy, resulting in the appeareance of tea- and coffee-houses, spreading from west to east across Europe. In the Ottoman empire, coffee came from Yemen, and was welcomed first and foremost by sufis. Coffee-houses showed up first in Egypt before making their appearance in Istanbul from the s onwards and really beginning to flourish in the seventeenth century.27 Since Hattox, most scholars have focused on the reaction of the state to this new phenomenon in social and cultural interaction, and on its attempts to control the resulting increased circulation of information. This applied to many other venues, too, with or without coffee. For example, sailors’ gatherings (oda sohbetleri) are mentioned by Evliya Çelebi at Galata,28 and also begin to appear in the late seventeenth-century court records of coastal towns as modest as Edremit.29 These and other gatherings where participants were likely to spend their time discussing daily burdens as well as affairs of state and society, criticizing the great and disparaging the authorities, were always suspect, and periodically vulnerable to harsh repression.30 Official discourse accused coffee-house goers of spreading rumours about state affairs, on which grounds the proprietors could see their establishments wrecked overnight. 31 In the s, the first generation of Kadızadeli fundamentalists targeted coffee-houses and sufi convents alike; in they tried again to have all coffee-houses in the capital closed. 32 In the aftermath of the revolt, other measures were introduced. New taxes imposed on coffee in the first half of the eighteenth century, as well as more effective policing, including institutionalgoers changes afterto for detecting andwith punishing unruly behaviour, led coffee-house to turn venues more in line their social rank and status – hence the development from one to many kinds of coffee-house. Meanwhile, some coffee-house owners, accused of gathering the most despicable characters in their establishments and allowing them to commit shameful acts, continued to be severely punished.33 An already extensive secondary literature abounds in such examples. Yet it is clear that laws intended to prohibit coffee-shops were never enforced with any great degree of success in the medium and long term. Eventually, repression was always relaxed, whereupon new coffee-houses sprang up. One reason may have been that even the elite harboured tolerant as well as repressive attitudes. For example, in , at the time of the second Kadızadeli wave, the celebrated Damascene sufi al-Nabulusi, mentioned above as appreciating Birgivi’s work, used an ingenious trope in a poem praising the Prophet Muhammad – a cryptogram hiding the word for coffee. Shortly thereafter, he set out for Istanbul34 but was not welcomed and had to turn back, probably because of the controversy his poems had triggered. He later claimed that singing and musical instruments were licit (), defended tobacco smoking (, ) and wrote in defence of the Mevlevi rite of the whirling dance () and of male homosexual love.35 How court circles reacted to al-Nabulusi’s writings remains to be studied. Earlier, two seventeenth-century şeyhülislams clearly took an anti-repression stance. Zekeriyazade Yahya (–, –, –) and Hocazade Bahai (–, –) were both renowned for their allegorical poetry abounding in supposedly mystical
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references to wine, feasts, taverns, cupbearers and beloveds. Yahya was overtly pro-sufi, while Bahai clashed with the Kadızadelis through his refusal to impose a tobacco ban. More obliquely, the works of prominent seventeenth-century literary figures such as Atayi, Nabi, Sabit, Veysi and Nergisi not only extol springtime, poetry, excursions and other pleasures – which hardly shows an ascetic, fanatical cast of mind – but also provide seemingly non-partisan yet subtly critical commentaries on contemporary social and political debates. Thus Nergisi, having relegated sufis, Kadızadelis and riff-raff to coffee-houses, taverns or public gardens in provincial centres such as Elbasan and Saraybosna, presenting these as distant escapes, describes different types of men of religion: those whowho in their honesty andand modesty mixeven andtomingle with the common people, and those are too proud arrogant pass by a coffee-house, 36 never mind exchange courtesies with their customers. Ahmed III, brought up in the Kadızadeli circles, not only increased taxes on coffee, as noted earlier, but also tried occasionally to restrict coffee-houses, as well as street vendors and even public transportation, apparently out of a desire to limit public circulation of information. His protégé Nedim, however, wrote in very much the same vein as the earlier müftü poets Zekeriyazade Yahya and Hocazade Bahai. Equally problematic was the sheer practical impossibility of banning something that many people enjoyed. Frequenting a coffee-shop was not in itself criminal. It did not entail intoxication or any masquerade or other form of behaviour at odds with normative conduct. In time, its liberating character, allowing for going out at night, and cutting across most social or religious boundaries, itself became a norm. But to what extent and when did the coffee-house become a fully fused, integrated, undivided public space? A well-known miniature painting, undated but generally attributed to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, showing an interior full of people reading, making music, or playing backgammon or mangala, also indicates the presence of judges, men of learning, or officials without a current post, along with commoners.37 Hence Kafadar has suggested a ‘democratization of hospitality’ whereby dignitaries emerged from their secluded selamlıks to socialize in more mixed and visible coffeehouse settings.38 Yet, on closer examination, this miniature seems subtly segregated into a series of sub-compartments, with musicians seated to one side, players in the foreground, young people in the middle of the room, and those who appear to be truly upperclass in a rear alcove of their own. This suggests that existing hierarchies could be carried over into the seemingly common setting of a crammed coffee-house. 39 Current research suggests that, even in the seventeenth century, coffee-house clienteles were specialized not only by district but also by profession, class, ethnic background or cultural interest, thereby coming not so much to cut across as to replicate social 40
divides. strong example,city perhaps extreme, concerns the Janissaries. Notgenerations only Istanbul but Aevery provincial had its contingent of Janissaries who over established their own closed community in a privileged neighbourhood. An Istanbul kefalet defteri (sureties register) for lists coffee-shops in Galata alone, most of them frequented by Janissaries.41 The register in question is itself a product of the new surveillance and policing measures that required artisans, shopkeepers and their employees to provide sponsors or guarantors. Instead of trying to ban outright, the authorities were beginning to look for ways of controlling the unruly. Thirty years later, a similar concentration of coffee-houses is found at Sipah Pazarı in Üsküdar. 42
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Direct involvement in politics produced particularly heated political discussion in the yeniçeri kahvesi. Judging by the decorative plaques and other memorabilia noted by late nineteenth-century observers, this distinctive identity survived long after the Janissary corps was suppressed in . Together with gradual social relaxation, a progressive gentrification is also apparent by . While much work remains to be done on the architecture of coffee-houses and their locations throughout the city, it is clear that some were especially luxurious establishments.43 In these, a spacious hall with high ceilings, delicately carved wood panels and wide windows that opened up to side rooms created a quality of semi-open space, further enhanced through centrally located interior fountains or pools as well as annexed courtyards or flower gardens. Melling’s engraving of a late eighteenth-century coffee-house in Tophane exemplifies several of these aspects (see figure .). The attendants are noted in the text as Laz from the eastern Black Sea region. The customers sitting on benches running around the three outer sides of the central hall are identified by their headgear. At the upper end of the social scale, three are immediately identifiable as prominent men through their selimi turbans. Two others, carrying pen-cases, appear to be highranking bureaucrats, while a third (just entering from the right) is clearly an ağa , as indicated by the dagger in his sash. The first customer to the left is a Mevlevi smoking a water-pipe and conversing with one of the bureaucrats. Next come four sailors: two (probably an officer and a ship’s clerk) are smoking pipes, while two are looking out of the window at the busy harbour. They are followed by two Armenians playing chess, with another Mevlevi dervish sitting next to them wearing a detached, disapproving expression. Also included are another sailor, a bostancı (with a baretta) and the second bureaucrat, who also wears a bored look. Although some scholars have speculated that this might be a purely imaginary scene, this is very unlikely. Everything in Melling’s work is based on empirical observation, with one proviso: nothing which he regards as unseemly – such as garbage, mud, dead birds, stray dogs, dilapidated houses or poor people – finds its way into his pictures. But neither does he add anything of his own imagination to create a beautified version of the real world. This engraving may not show a typical coffee-house but it is still an actual one, specially selected for its aesthetic values. Its architecture is not likely to have been invented, though it is perhaps accentuated. Melling depicts not an all-inclusive clientele but an open, cosmopolitan sub-community infused with a Nakşibendi–Müceddidi common denominator. In the years to come, artists such as Thomas Allom, William Henry Bartlett or Amadeo Preziosi would depict markers of politeness and refinement in similarly spacious, somewhat theatrical, yet sober and aestheticized coffee-houses in Istanbul, often located near the waterfront. CIVILITY, WELLBEING AND BOUNDARY TRANSGRESSION
In the early eighteenth century, and especially after the earthquake of May , sea transport was improved and urban movement facilitated by rebuilding or upgrading piers and piazzas in the capital. Population increase and a new sensitivity towards
g, n i lle M ec a n -Ige n i to n A . ) m o fr ecd ,is u ar d P o r (e p e ro R .e phs o n a B h u p d o s T ve n i irs es e u dt o e h e-f ople f n i o c t yr an ts tu on n ec C - e th ed n ee su q t er h ieg ott i et p la aeg a y f o o V g in va gr n E . e r u ig F
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public health led to a physical expansion reflected in new or reconstructed watersupply systems, including a growing number of fountains built or rebuilt, especially around landing-places. Perhaps resembling Renaissance sculpture in the round, such free-standing monumental fountains, as well as hamams and libraries, began to dominate the cityscape. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century public works were generally freed from the binding matrix of socio-religious complexes and situated in a novel urban context. Meant to be viewed from any angle, they invited motion all around them. In other major cities, too, such public fountains became objects of patronage by a new group of wealthy men and women.44 to The new provincial water sources also enabled an increase in therecords numbera of public baths in Access Istanbul. situation is unclear. Ibn Kannan similar growth of bath-building in Damascus at the beginning of the eighteenth century. But contemporary Cairo and Aleppo, which were considerably bigger than Damascus, did not have a proportionate number of bathing facilities.45 Local custom, more than water or the supply of firewood, may have played a role in this. The presence or absence of pools, too, probably has to be explained by reference to legal teachings and practice.46 Most schools of Islamic law held that water became impure through contact with an unclean body or vessel. To this, Malikis were the sole exception, which is consistent with the finding that, unlike Middle Eastern cities (and Cairo in particular), Istanbul’s Ottoman baths never had plunge pools where people socialized and often transgressed on boundaries (see figure .a). Even so, in Mustafa III issued a decree which
Figure .a A plunge pool: Ahmed I album, Topkapı Palace Library B, , folio a.
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forbade the building of new public baths in the capital. The pretext was to limit the consumption of water as well as of firewood.47 It is around this time that private bathing facilities became more commonly available. Especially in the newly growing neighbourhoods along the shores of the Bosphorus, in-house bathing was a marker of wealth and the desire for comfort and civility – but, for fun and sociability, even the most privileged continued to visit the public hamams. Whether there was also an attempt to gentrify the hamams is a question for the future. In any case, baths offered both practical hygiene and sacred cleansing, which aimed to remove invisible dirt from a symbolically constructed body. Throughout the year numerous festiveasrituals be staged hamams.chamber Their centrally domed halls also served publicwould forums. From in thethe disrobing to the tepid andmain hot chambers, there were many opportunities to mix and mingle, but news was exchanged especially around the marble platforms on which one could recline and receive an attendant’s massage. The male quarters of hamams were especially busy on Thursday nights, with what was said and heard at the neighbourhood hamam being spread the next day among larger masses gathered in mosque courtyards for the Friday noon prayer. In principle, most baths were open to all. But how was it in practice? Patrona Halil, the leader of the revolt, is said to have been a sailor-turned-attendant of the Bayezid hamam, 48 which according to Evliya Çelebi, writing half a century earlier, was ‘allocated’ to holy men ( veli). Evliya also proposes connections between other hamams and specific groups. He associates the sick with the public bath at Eyüb, thieves with the Çengelköy hamam, the insane with Alaca hamam, atheists with Büyük Çukur hamam, and drunkards with the Tarabya hamam. 49 The list is extensive and includes people from many walks of life. At least some, maybe even much, of this may be satirically intended. Nevertheless, Evliya’s claim that members of the learned class, palace attendants, artists and artisans, merchants or unruly elements of the lower classes met at the hamam of their choice suggests that (as, perhaps, with coffee-houses) public baths served as classified clubs. The names of some provincial hamams – Yahudi (for Jews), Paşa (for high dignitaries), Kadınlar (for women), Pazar (marketplace), Tuzcı (for salt-mongers) – also attest to special clienteles differentiated along gender, professional, class or congregational lines. 50 NonMuslims often frequented their neighbourhood hamams – hence Rum Hamamı in Kütahya or Ermeni Batağı in Istanbul. Even then, some amount of mixing and mingling was inevitable. In Lady Mary Wortley Montagu estimated that there were two hundred women in the hamam she visited in Edirne: ‘’tis the women’s coffee-house, where all the news of the town is told, scandal invented, etc. They generally take this diversion once a week, and stay there at least four or five hours.’51 Women who hardly left their houses otherwise were able to socialize at hamams with their peers, and sometimes with women not from their immediate social circle. Conversations extended from local news, such as wealth and poverty, circumcisions, marriage arrangements, sickness and recovery, to more public gossip concerning promotions or dismissals. They sometimes feasted and made merry, dancing to music. The Zenânnâme (Book of Women) by the libertine poet Fazıl Enderûnî (d. ), features a hamam scene showing a group of naked women and one conspicuously dressed woman, perhaps included to indicate the distinguished status of the bathers (see figure .b). After all, it was a
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Figure .b Women in a hamam, from Fazıl Enderûnî’s Hûbânnâme ve Zenânnâme, Istanbul University T , folio a. Reproduced from Metin And, Osmanlı tasvir sanatları I: minyatür (Istanbul: İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, ), .
forum where the regulars followed correct bathing etiquette, with elaborate bathing equipment. In contrast, urban baths and barber-shops were often associated with a wide range of criminal activity, ranging from theft, drunkenness and prostitution (operated out of back or upper rooms) to inner-city violence. Communities developed methods for policing themselves from within. Among the measures taken were the banning of decorative pictures displaying private body parts hung on the walls of hamams and of the long-standing practice of the washers giving a rubdown.52 The stokeholes (külhan) of neighbourhood hamams were run by men sentenced to forced labour, often led by a bully character known as külhanbeyi (chief stoker). As with Anatolian celalis on a much larger scale, this local tough was allowed a certain authority in return for maintaining order in the neighbourhood.53 Stokeholes also provided food, shelter, warmth and
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discipline for young orphans, tramps or potential riff-raff. Functioning as a mendicant order, the youngsters left the külhan everyday to beg for alms and food; the latter was cooked by the külhanbeyi and consumed communally.54 As such, stokeholes became a kind of rehabilitation centre for drifters and the homeless, both Muslim and nonMuslim, while in times of unrest it was through them that social discontent spread, to the point of causing upheaval. The Ottoman barber, shaving heads and trimming beards, was part of the cleaning process. Many also excelled in dental care, administered circumcision, applied leeches for bloodletting and vacuum cups for congestion relief; some became famous as herb55
alists. As they competed with shut (overwhelmingly non-Muslım) practitioners, such barber shops were often down. Women working ascertified physicians, surgeons and midwives visited their patients at home, while in Cairo some even had their own shops.56 There were also female healers (mostly sufis) as well as magicians, astrologers and geomancers. Travellers’ accounts confirm that female physicians and others did not provide medical care merely for women. 57 Most of them also served across religious divides. Meanwhile, increasing surveillance over physicians’ shops in Edirne and Istanbul in the eighteenth century seems to suggest that the authorities also felt challenged by a new group of (European) health providers and their unconventional prescriptions.58 Some barber-shops were closed down on grounds of being used for sexual trysts. More generally, they were also centres for information and gossip. The barber and sufi Ahmad al-Budayri al-Hallaq compiled a detailed account of life in mid-eighteenthcentury Damascus. Written in the name of the small people ( al-asagir) and commoners (al-‘awamm) as opposed to the big people (al-akabir), it is fraught with anxiety. Not only are the governors corrupt, the soldiers unruly, prices high, and public morality undermined by the decline in government authority, but also the incessant deaths, murders, suicides, natural disasters, uprisings and prostitutes all point to a stressed and distressed society. Al-Budayri here represents the voice of the common people raised aloud in an apocalyptic prophecy about imminent devastation in uncertain times.59 EATING OUT, INDULGING AND MORAL ANXIETIES
It has been argued that ‘a considerable part of [the] condition of disorder’ portrayed by al-Budayri was what he viewed as ‘transgressions of social codes by certain groups, whose violations he may have seen as infringements on his own few privileges as a Muslim male’. Included among such new social vogues were ‘women going out on picnics and smoking in public [in Damascus], or Jews sitting on stools higher than those of Muslims in a coffeehouse’.60 Ottoman Egypt, women in Similar the marketplace wereevident blamed being Solidarity more visibleInthan their male counterparts. concerns are in for Istanbul. within local quarters was crucial as a means of filling the intermediate gap or vacuum between authority and social interaction. Here, kefalet (standing surety for each other’s behaviour) emerged as a form of collective responsibility.61 Marcus has argued that Ottoman coercion from above was the motivating factor in community policing efforts in Aleppo. Rafeq, in contrast, has interpreted breaches of moral conduct in Damascus as characterizing a weak administration, which only periodically attempted to enforce law and order.62 Both the and kefalet registers for Istanbul list
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all the traders and shopkeepers who were required to guarantee each other’s behaviour, including the many külhans providing shelter for homeless adults, porters, farm labourers or carpenters, including non-Muslims.63 Needy women, too, found many opportunities in a variety of economic activities.64 Uprooted from their villages, a large portion of the urban workforce was sheltered and fed in the marketplace. The register, already mentioned for the evidence it provides on coffee-houses, enumerates several kinds of places for eating out, such as the kebabcı, aşcı, cevrenci, hoşabcı, şerbetci or helvacı. Particularly noteworthy are shops that attest to the sweet tooth of Ottoman society: muhallebici, aşureci, salebci, kadayıfcı şekerci koltukçu . Atlow Üsküdar’s in to , (makeshift foodand shops with stools toSipah sit on)Pazarı appear havenearly been fifty situated rights next to one another. The sicils of Üsküdar and Yeniköy show more landings on the Bosphorus crowded with food- and cook-shops of all kinds.65 In addition to the public kitchens of socio-religious complexes or sufi convents, as well as the inns, taverns and shops (kebabcıs and aşçıs) that catered mainly to the urban poor and labourers, there were specialized bakeries (gözlemecis, börekcis, çörekcis and simitcis), at some of which one might even be seated for lunch.66 Some were famous for the quality of their food. Even such a great and most refined dignitary as the grand vezir Nevşehirli İbrahim Paşa (in office –) routinely ordered pastries or offal from street kitchens. 67 Eating out was similarly popular in Baghdad, especially in the evenings in the wine-houses and taverns located along the banks of the Tigris, and among middle-class or upper middle-class families.68 In Cairo, in contrast, it was the poor and lower classes who frequently did not cook at home. But (at least until the sixteenth-century appearance of coffee-houses) neither did they eat out as a leisure activity. Instead, and despite the 69poor to mediocre quality, they resorted to cook-shops or street-vendors for takeaways. Evliya, who was among those surprised to see large numbers of women in this line of business in Cairo, often touches upon the culinary habits of the towns and cities that he visited, including Bursa, Kütahya and Belgrade. He also reported from the capital that ‘at night many poor people assemble in the shops and eat tripe or trotter soup in order to recover from heavy drinking’ (see figure .).70 In times when kitchens were yet to be built into houses, such food shops offering only basic fare served as regular meeting places for local artisans and workers, old acquaintances and long-time residents of a neighbourhood, as well as for recent arrivals, sailors and merchants. Hence, too, they all provided opportunity to gather, to give and to get information, and to discuss religious or current affairs. Eating out often introduced into urban life new possibilities for, and increased anxieties about, social interaction. Around the capital’s eateries were some of the places where intoxicating substances çubukcu could be consumed publicly (duhani , bozacı Occasionally, tailors, or barber-shops would be annexed to ,certain coffeeor).tobacco-houses (or vicegrocers versa). Addicts sought opium, cannabis or other stimulating mixtures (beng, berş, ma‘cun), pushers of which worked from the hamams.71 Alehouses or taverns selling boza and even alcoholic drinks offered entertainment, feasting and drinking, music and dance, noisy merriment, costume and spectacle, plays and other performances. This world of upside-down behaviour contrasted sharply with the outward norms of everyday life.72 Istanbul in the eighteenth century was marked by mor al anxieties, deeper than usual signs of change, conflict and discord. Military setbacks, economic disruption, and
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Figure . Tavern scene from Fazıl Enderûnî’s Hūbânnâme ve Zenânnâme, Istanbul University Library, T , folio a. Reproduced from Metin And, Osmanlı tasvir sanatları I: minyatür (Istanbul, İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, ), .
scarcity and famine in the countryside combined with population increase to bring unemployment and poverty. Increased social mobility exacerbated problems of hygiene, provisioning and security. The migration of young and single, landless but armed men to the capital led to violent crimes, including arson, armed robbery, assault, rape and murder by day and night, in the streets as well as in gardens and vineyards. It is in this context that sexual licentiousness is said to have risen, as well as attempts to control it. For example, during the s there is a curious jump in the number of reported cases of licentious activity by kalyoncu s residing at the bachelors’ rooms at Üsküdar’s Balaban İskelesi. In , there was a public furore over the closing of all taverns, and the persecution of prostitutes and drunkards in the capital, which was said to have been triggered by a dream dreamt by a renowned Nakşi–Müceddidi sheikh from Turhal, a certain Mustafa Efendi, said to be a disciple of al-Muradi (of Damascus). 73 Thereafter,
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in addition to patrols in various disreputable districts, Jewish apartments or neighbourhoods and bachelors’ rooms were routinely demolished. 74 Determined to clear Istanbul of all prostitutes, Selim III reissued dress regulations and banned Muslim women from boarding non-Muslim boats, or any boats in the company of men. 75 Evidence for the complexity of social-sexual attitudes appears in a late eighteenthcentury bahname , an Ottoman book of pornography. It depicts a ‘members-only private club’ where, in the comfortable à la mode interiors of an elite brothel, numerous young men are shown enjoying sex fantasies (see figure .). 76 What is fascinating is that, asheadgear, in Melling’s Tophane are allnizam-ı wearingcedid characteristic, identifying ranging fromcoffee-house, the red beretsthey of the to turbans typical of various bureaucrats, including the Mevlevi order. The careful depiction of headgear seems to suggest that the miniatures in this bahname might have been intended as social criticism, as an exposure of decadence cutting across virtually the entire elite. For men of status, such establishments may have served as second homes where they could relax and socialize with friends over coffee or other stimulants. Unfortunately, neither such elite men’s clubs nor their lower-status equivalents are adequately described in narrative or archival sources. Not only those establishments referred to as koltukçus, meaning clandestine, transient and low-class eateries, taverns or coffeehouses, but also the ehl-i keyf, the reckless hedonists in high circles, elude documentation except in poetry. As for ‘women of pleasure’, records provide their names, the
Figure . A brothel from the s. Private collection.
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punishments to which they were occasionally subjected, and the cyclical routine of official intimidation, provincial exile and quick return which they seem to have repeatedly endured. One contemporary document, a rare register of the personal belongings of imprisoned prostitutes, lists objects of considerable value (some of European origin), which may indicate that, like the bahname ladies, these particular women were not ordinary street-walkers.77 Never entirely legalized but always surviving in a twilight zone, prostitution was strictly banned in the vicinity of mosques. However, bachelors’ rooms, taverns, hamams, coffee-houses and barber-shops, all located at the heart of residential neighbourhoods, served to varying degrees asprobably secondary homesfrom of (male female) 78 prostitution. Many lower-class prostitutes worked their or homes. Public consumption of intoxicating substances and alcohol was seen as paralleling their overt sexuality. Ahmad al-Budayri, the barber and storyteller, describes the prostitutes of Damascus in the s as having a very noticeable presence, smoking and drinking coffee in public.79 Mikhail al-Burayk, a contemporary Orthodox monk, also describes how Christian women in the same city, deceived by the devil, dressed provocatively and drank araq at public picnics: ‘there is no evil nor any oppression for which women are not its cause’.80 Following the enthronement of Selim III, many of Istanbul’s prostitutes were imprisoned or exiled to nearby Bursa, Iznik or some Aegean island. However, many returned to Istanbul, and in some cases the available documentation refers to the same women again and again. Because of the requirement for four suitable witnesses – adult male Muslims of good reputation – to testify to having seen the offenders in flagrante delicto, execution was rare.81 Men, however, were lightly punished, probably because prostitutes’ or brothels’ customers were often members of the military-bureaucracy or even the ulema. Unsurprisingly, some of those who tried to rid the public sphere of prostitution had vices of their own. The number of medrese students, mollas, imams or priests caught in the act at medreses or mosques reveals the extent of ‘sin’ and ‘sinners’ in all-male circles, but the punishment for same-sex intercourse was ‘in most cases left undetermined’.82 Some were even discovered in their own homes. A period miniature, showing annoyed neighbours raiding a house of sinners, suggests a certain ‘quarter solidarity’ (see figure .). Rafeq refers to such groups policing city quarters in Damascus; Semerdjian has demonstrated how, in Aleppo, local communities, not the state, policed crimes involving women.83 The discrepancy between actual practice and the moral ideals set by theological works is also revealed in Ben-Naeh’s study of Hebrew sources from Damascus, Jerusalem, Izmir, Salonica and Istanbul. These show a late eighteenth-century increase in thethe frequency of same-sex activity. Ben-Naeh proposed first, possibility of a genuine increase in the initially frequency of such two casesexplanations: as part of a growing breakdown of the boundaries of Jewish law and morality; second, the increase in the reporting of such events as an expression of a public reaction to changes in state and society, in response to a growing sense of too much freedom and a breakdown of tradition. He concludes that there was ‘an attempt to re-determine and redefine the limits of what was permitted and what was forbidden’.84
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Figure . Neighbours disturbing a house of sinners, from Nevizâde Atayî’s Hamse,
Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum Library no. , folio a.
ROYAL GARDENS AND PUBLIC OUTINGS
Ambiguities also surround yet another form of public space in the making. Istanbul’s royal gardens are said to have become public gardens during the eighteenth century by being opened to the public, and thereby to have provided yet another venue for increased urban mobility and social interaction, even allowing for women to mix with men.85 As the court resettled in Istanbul in after a long sojourn in Edirne, and again after the earthquake, there were bursts of new construction, involving especially a new splendour of summer palaces and kiosks located in spacious gardens on the shores of the Bosphorus and along the Golden Horn as far as the meadows upstream from where the Sweet Waters of Europe (the Kağıdhane stream) ran into the inlet. These waves of (re)building certainly went hand in hand with enhanced use of outdoor space. The Sa‘dabad summer palace functioned as a stage for many royal parties designed to project dynastic grandeur in the presence and with the participation (and for the benefit) of the administrative elite, leading dignitaries and courtiers. This complex represented a different concept from the suburban gardens and kiosks of earlier centuries, to which sultans had retreated to seek seclusion and meditation,
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and which had served to enhance the mysteries of a relatively less visible sultanate. In contrast, royal grandeur was very much on display at Sa‘dabad (or elsewhere on the waterfronts), as the inhabitants of the early eighteenth-century capital were called upon to recollect, re-embrace and cherish the dynasty. The court wanted to become visible while still remaining a marvel admired from a distance. Palace walls no longer signalled exclusion and secrecy, but were meant both to reveal and to maintain social and cultural boundaries. Royal hunting parties, which had once served to showcase physical strength, well-being and quasi-martial valour, fell into neglect and were replaced by carefully designed urban spectacles.86 This festive attitude seems to have been replicated by the upper classes inallmajor Balkan and Middle cities, particularly Cairo, Aleppo or Damascus, of which certainly aspiredEastern to things , but Istanbullu which also developed at their own pace and perhaps under different local dynamics.87 However, these ‘new’ gardens cannot be described as just ‘becoming public’. Throughout the eighteenth century, the hills, open fields, meadows, vineyards, orchards and gardens, often surrounding royal palaces in Istanbul, were separated from imperial vakıf lands, and a new, very complicated system of ownership based on secondary or tertiary rights developed. It was a process which ended some traditional rights, such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on land which was legally owned by the sultan and partially endowed to beneficiaries such as royal family members and dignitaries. Gradually their tenants, and the tenants of tenants, came to claim full property rights. We still know very little about this process, which was part of a complex phenomenon, one connected with other questions related to the supposed emergence of women into (supposedly fully) public space, and often complicated by sometimes thinly disguised conflicts between what was happening at the dynastic level, or among the courtly elite, and a much more subterranean sphere of popular beliefs and practices. Such ambiguities involving both gardens and women (or gender and sexuality) may be traced back to the early seventeenth century, to the Ottoman culture of leisure outings and their connection with meditation and melancholy. 88 Evliya Çelebi provides a virtually encyclopaedic entry on Istanbul’s gardens in the s, noting the special significance for the sultan of those at Kasımpaşa and Beşiktaş, and commenting on the non-royal gardens at Salacak and Şemsi Paşa in Üsküdar, where, he says, beauties swam and lovers enjoyed boat rides. He informs us that outings ( teferrüc) were made not only by the privileged to locations with kiosks, pools and fountains where they could enjoy hunting parties, horse races, polo, wrestling, archery or sight-seeing. Outings to the woods and meadows, or to any places of excursion ( teferrücgah) outside the city, were also enjoyed by commoners. The Kağıdhane meadows had long been considered both as a royal garden or paradise ( has bahçe, irem bağı) and as a commons (e.g., mesire 89
[gah] or nüzhetgah ). A terminology of ‘gazing’ Arabic ), mostly from hadika to or seyrangah , strongly suggests that (the leisure and haddaka recreation entailed temaşagah stationary observation, contemplation or reflection on nature, as opposed to gazing at others or being gazed upon oneself. The meadows of Kağıdhane, blooming with tulips, were, Evliya emphasizes, meant to be viewed from a distance and probably served as a model for other gardens.90 He uses no special term for a park or public promenade, which suggests that strolling did not come into this. 91 Meanwhile, not only the royal gardens in Edirne and Bursa but also distant ones such as the hadika-i sultaniye in Aleppo, in the vicinity of Gökmeydan, were closely monitored from Istanbul.92
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Figure . Dervishes in a forest on the Asian side of the Bosphorus (detail from a larger
panorama). Oil on canvas, × cm. Orientalist Museum, Doha, Qatar, OM .
Domestic crowding and its stifling impact on the individual also seems to have led many city-dwellers to seek solitude outdoors (see figure .). In open spaces, including graveyards, one could enjoy tranquillity and seclusion. The countryside provided relief from physical problems and pain, reduced psychological stress, and strengthened a sense of well-being. Indeed, a recent study on Ottoman medicine highlights the concept of ‘therapeutic landscape’.93 Retreat and meditation, and other forms of withdrawal, evasion or escape, were also part of religious practice.94 Sufi dervishes as well as commoners in poor physical or psychological health found refuge in thick groves and meadows, in coming close to nature. Holy springs, fountains and pools were believed to add to the healing qualities of the scenery. The countryside also attracted anti-social brotherhoods or orders which turned their backs on society. Watenpaugh defines wilderness as the domain of the antinomian saint.95 Severe depression, or melancholy, appears frequently in biographical accounts of voluntary seclusion, or of wandering in search of peace. In Atayi’s Heft-han, the friends
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of a maddened lover suggest that he visit the Göksu meadows, or alternatively the Kaba, the tomb of Karaca Ahmed, or the shrines of Sarı Saltuk Baba or Kızıl Deli Sultan.96 However, withdrawals from society were not absolute. The Damascene mystic and jurist al-Nabulusi joined friends on numerous outings to gardens on the outskirts of his city during his seven-year retreat (–). These gatherings, undertaken especially ‘in the rose season’, lasted for days, with the parties engaged in literary competitions.97 It should be noted that the ostensible cause for al-Nabulusi’s retreat was the harrassment he suffered for his defence of male love, including the practice of nazar (gazing) at handsome young men.98 INCREASED VISIBILITY FOR WOMEN?
In such garden settings some poets found inspiration to write about imaginary encounters between the sexes, while others made more mundane observations. These, together with the observations of contemporary European women travellers (increasing substantially at this time), have been subject to a variety of interpretations, including that of eighteenth-century Ottoman ‘reform’ necessarily extending to social matters and the status of women. Much generalization has been based on visual evidence, which certainly offers significant clues to Ottoman socio-cultural developments. Consider, for example, the work of Jean-Baptiste Vanmour, an artist from Valenciennes who lived in Istanbul between and . One of his pictures shows a group of men and obviously loose women (with rather exposed bosoms) at a wine party, eating and drinking to musical accompaniment. The setting is a hilltop, possibly overlooking the Bosphorus. Sinister-look99 Vanmour ing guards sit a short distance away from the group, enjoying their pipes. painted many such scenes, even depicting Ahmed III in the company of licentious females. However, when he chose to portray honourable women, the artist distinctly emphasized their social rank. A second work depicts an outing of the French ambassadress. The genteel ladies are highlighted in bright, cheerful colours, whereas those who prepare or serve food and drink, or who play music and dance, are left in the shadows, together with a few men who appear to be guards. In a third example, chaste and righteous middle-class women, veiled and dressed in sober gowns and accompanied by their children, are shown apart from other women wearing fashionable low-cut dresses, smoking and enjoying a leisurely time. In both paintings the setting is probably near the Sweet Waters of Europe at the far end of the Golden Horn. At first sight, the last scene suggests even more explicitly a clash of two social classes or cultures. However, Vanmour has women on both sides of the painting look up at a naked female figure in the sky, a hazy apparition recalling the Indian goddess Shiva, or Andromeda, a princess in mythology who gavebehaviour her name (see to figure a constellation. as aGreek warning against immoral .). This was perhaps intended Vanmour’s Ottoman contemporaries Musavvir Hüseyin, Levni, İbrahim and Abdullah Buhari also painted ‘sexy’ women.100 Early eighteenth-century representations of elite ladies imagined them predominantly as objects of sensual pleasure, picnicking leisurely on the Bosphorus, or enjoying swings, music, dance, food or fishing in the privacy of their gardens (see figure .). Depictions of women from the s show them in communal baths, giving birth in the privacy of their apartments, or as sex objects in brothels. In this corpus of miniatures, same-sex love
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Figure .OilWomen looking at a female figure inAmsterdam, the sky, by Jean-Baptiste on canvas, × up cm. Rijksmuseum, SK-A-. Vanmour.
and even sodomy also appear, as social criticism directed at the upper classes who indulge in wilful and decadent behaviour. Visual erotica featuring both men and women become significantly more plentiful from the early eighteenth century onwards.101 There can be no doubt that such miniatures were made for elite consumption, but the status of the women they portray must be separately explored. Middle-class women are depicted in a variety of public and private situations – filing for divorce before a law court, entertaining guests in their gardens, making love, or catching a husband coupling with a servant at home.102 The view that the organized spectacles of Ahmed III’s court were ‘deliberate attempts to foster a climate of sexual immorality’ derives largely from Şemdanizade’s personal prejudices.103 This misogynist chronicler appears to have developed a specific hatred for Nevşehirli Ibrahim Paşa, the grand vezir who masterminded the capital’s princely entertainments in the s. Neither art nor literature reflects social reality in a direct, photographic way. In fact, the two can be hugely divergent. When describing the private gardens and public parks of Damascus, al-Nabulusi highlights a social elite comprising members of notable families, government officials and eminent scholars. Although his memoirs testify to the total absence of women from those outings, where sophisticated poetry exchanges outshone all other activities, his divan (collected poems) nevertheless abounds in references to female beauty on such occasions – i.e., not to women themselves but to the
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Figure . Ladies picnicking leisurely on the Bosphorus. Miniature painting, × cm.
Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz env. no. J /, pl. . Photo © bpk / Museum für Islamische Kunst, SMB / Georg Niedermeiser.
idea of them. Akkach argues that it was the very absence of women in social circles which ‘was compensated by the romantic elegies and love poetry that often mapped the feminine virtues of the beloved over the landscape. The appreciation of nature’s beauty was thus mediated by poetic imageries celebrating femininity’.104 The celebrated court poet Nedim (–), a near-contemporary of al-Nabulusi in Istanbul, described regular princely gatherings in which he participated. His poems have regularly been taken as testimony to a ‘spectacle of urban life’ where, among other developments of the so-called Tulip Age, women of lesser fortune, too, are believed to have figured favourably.105 Sılay has convincingly illustrated Nedim’s radical changes
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in literary expression and his use of realistic images and metaphors; he has also dwelt on Nedim’s blatantly homoerotic poems. But with regard to Nedim’s cultural milieu, Sılay does not challenge the myths of the Ottoman eighteenth century and the related assumptions of increased female visibility.106 His study of Nedim is illustrated with anachronistic visuals, including a miniature depicting noble women at the royal Sa‘dabad complex on the Kağıdhane meadows, and other depictions of ladies taken from Fazıl Enderûni’s Zenânnâme.107 The association of such images is problematic. Not only was Fazıl an eccentric who was notorious for displaying socially unacceptable forms of behaviour,108 but the late eighteenth-century illustrations of sensual women in bookatwere to portrayofa aromanticized, not109a realistic, view of public life in thehis s, leastmeant three-quarters century earlier. Women certainly did add some glitter to the portrayal of the new money, the new elite, and the new aspirations for an enhanced visibility associated with the eighteenth century. However, some revisions are due. First, the time-frame for cultural openings for women, allowing them to be seen in public space, together with men, needs elucidation.110 Exactly when and how did this happen? The Zenânnâme miniature is the single Ottoman painting (in two versions) which has been repeatedly used as standard evidence for the ‘opening up’ of royal gardens to the public, and hence also for the ‘emancipation’ of women. Nineteenth-century European engravings depict more women in the open. Both genres are mis- or over-represented in the secondary literature to postulate an early eighteenth-century advance towards the partial emancipation of women.111 Secondly, a more nuanced understanding of social differentiation along class lines, particularly the position of women of the urban bourgeoisie and the urban poor, would help avoid the generalizations of simple classification into high, middle and lower social groups. Who were these women and in which public spaces (other than royal gardens) did they socialize? Ottoman society was class-conscious, and the preservation of social boundaries was of utmost importance. At Sa‘dabad, initially a private resort of the sultan and a select group of dignitaries, even in the s, when the Zenânnâme miniature was painted, the ladies portrayed sitting and relaxing were not representative of Istanbul women at large; they were the prosperous few who lived within the palace walls. Thirdly, the extent of such outings, and the nature of contact between men and women, all need clarification in time and space. What circumstances, if any, point to emancipation as against a strictly controlled way of socializing? Artists were always careful to observe and indicate the barriers separating the ‘amme and hassa from the private realm of the ladies. They depicted women sitting on verdant lawns, gathering in small groups, and relaxing or dancing, but not strolling around or mixing with nonfamily of the but opposite sex.ofOutdoor clothing didupbecome less restrictive andmembers cumbersome, women status were never styles dressed in practical fitted garments, such as the riding coats of their European counterparts, which would have allowed them to move and act. The increased and apparently unconventional representation of Istanbul women may well be explained not by the liberation of women themselves, but by the gradual liberation of local artists from court patronage. 112 Western artists, too, seem to have incorporated absentee women into their landscapes in order to satisfy the curiosity of their customers. Poetic accounts, expounding on lush greens, shades, flowers,
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pools and streams, and cool breezes have also been much used in this regard. But they pose many questions when no distinction is made between the real and the imagined. 113 All in all, it is difficult to accept that women’s public presence was characteristic of the s, instead of being very embryonic compared with developments in the tanzimat era. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as attested by period fetvas, preachers kept denouncing women. Regulatory scriptures, from Birgivi to the Kadızadelis and others, banned them from leaving their homes – even to visit cemeteries. The position of late eighteenth-century Nakşi–Müceddidi reformists vis-à-vis the status of women appears even more of complex, and impossible classify as pro-emancipation. Open expressions sexuality in virtually the courtly arts, andtothe shift from idealistic to realistic depictions of nature – regarded as transgressions against or departures from the artistic as well as from the religious canon – have been interpreted by some authors as a longing for secularization. 114 But, all along, men and women, Muslim and non-Muslim, sufi or orthodox, were often (and harshly) blamed for transgressing the barriers of profession, rank or status and for mixing in unacceptable ways. Like his immediate predecessors, Selim III enforced clothing laws by prohibiting sumptuous materials and daring, provocative designs in women’s clothing. 115 He also banned free movement of women in general.116 Scholars have tended to interpret efforts to control clothing as targeting ostentation and extravagance or conspicuous consumption (on the basis of Islamic teachings prohibiting wasteful expenditure). However, Quataert has argued that the clothing laws sought to assure Ottoman subjects and elites that the world was still an orderly place in which all retained their respective political and social positions. They worked to reinforce the existing social markers, stressing control of men over women, Muslims over non-Muslims, and elites over subject classes. 117 Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century clothing laws had addressed violations by nonMuslims. In the eighteenth century the focus was on Muslims who dressed in European fashion, or on those of lower status who tried to dress like the higher classes.118 After , the need to re-establish dynastic continuity and to redefine the imperial image in Istanbul meant that expressions of the religious and social identities of Ottoman subjects needed to be carefully monitored. Hence, it was not a breakdown of boundaries but, on the contrary, a series of new regulations, whether in the form of palace protocol or clothing laws, which was at issue. Finally, while there was a genuine increase in visual representation not just of any women, but oftodistinguished the earlytoeighteenth this cannotto by itself be taken mean that theyladies were in beginning participatecentury, (and were coming be illustrated as participating) in princely events only at this time. Neither does it indicate that their appearance in male company was always depicted in purely realistic terms – that is to say, without making any moral statements. Among all seventeenth-century sultans, Ahmed I (–) and Mehmed IV (–) had the highest hunting reputations. Both were known to have been accompanied by royal ladies not only during their local hunting parties in the royal gardens of Istanbul but also on their most ardous expeditions in the wild. Furthermore, it is out of early seventeenth-century
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depictions of hunting banquets that a whole iconography of outdoor entertainment develops in Ottoman painting.119 Such scenes incorporate distinguished ladies into settings featuring feasting and music. However, there is a darker and more critical side to these. Ottoman scholars, chroniclers and artists were ambivalent towards the royal hunt. On the one hand, they endorsed its manly, war-like aspect. On the other hand, they felt compelled to hint at their (and society’s) disapproval of the aspects of luxury, pleasure-seeking, waste, extravagance or lust that such royal hunting parties entailed. This also extended to the inclusion of women, whose presence was associated with sin and the apocalypse; eighteenth-century offered their interpretation of Doomsday and apoc120 Could this be the alyptic omens.Nakşi–Müceddidis multi-layered cultural background to Vanmour’s painting about two different groups of women watched by a Shiva- or Andromeda-like apparition in the sky (see figure .)? In this respect we should also note Cifru’l-câmi, a classical book of apocalyptic omens (by Abdurrahman b. Ali el-Bistami, c.),121 which was translated into Ottoman as Tercüme-i Miftâh-ı Cifru’l-câmi and luxuriously illustrated in the s.122 Its eighteenth-century copy, dated to , reproduces virtually all features of earlier copies, except for the fact that the human figures are shown with neither hands nor feet, while their heads are replaced by either rose motifs or headgear.123 It thus embodies a rigorously orthodox anti-figural stand. This manuscript was presented to Prince Mustafa (III), the son of Ahmed III, the latter a sultan who is today stereotyped as an epicurean, a hedonist, a cultivated and sensous patron of arts and literature, and an ardent reformer in early pursuit of westernization. Selim III, who came to the throne more than fifty years later, has been surrounded by a similar reformist aura. What these clichéd views overlook is, first, the complicated ambiguity of the two centuries that preceded nineteenth-century reforms and, second, how even then, deep into the tanzimat era, women and non-Muslims, mixed-sex encounters and interconfessional mingling continued to be carefully monitored by the Nakşi–Müceddidis. NOTES Abu-Manneh , , . While the Ottoman Müceddidiyye is explored extensively by Şimşek (, , , , a, b, ) and several other theologians, among a number of recent PhD dissertations, Aysel Danacı Yıldız’s Vaka-yı Selimiye () reflects on the intriguing policies of the Islamic reformers in the s. However, neither discussions on ‘neo-sufism’ and ‘eighteenth century reform in Islam’ (Rahman ; Voll ; Levtzion and Voll ; O’Fahey and Radtke ; Radtke ) nor Schultze’s critique of the dominant historiographical paradigm of modernity in the Islamic world and
the have madebut an impact on Ottoman s notion neo-sufism ensuing has nowdebate been discarded, the controversy over studies. Islamic The modernity remainsofunsettled (Radtke ; Hofheinz ; Reichmuth ). For ‘post-classical’ Arabo-Ottoman intellectual life in the provinces, see Kellner-Heinkele ; Von Schlegell ; El-Rouayheb , , , . See also Le Gall . Bak and Benecke . Zilfi ; Baer . On the Kadızadelis, in addition to several publications of both Zilfi and Ocak, see the dissertations by Öztürk (), Çavuşoğlu () and Terzioğlu (). Beydilli : n. Curiously, Imam Birgivi is either seen as having a long-lasting influence
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on those who resisted Ottoman modernization (Peters ) or as foreshadowing trends characteristic of modernity in religion (Hagen ). Friedmann ; Ter Haar ; Buehler . Şimşek . Uşşakizâde : –. Le Gall : . Tanman ; Şimşek . Barbir : . Şimşek . Şimşek .
In , sufis in Cairo who were reading alouddated Birgivi’s writings (Flemming ; Peters clashed ). Awith letterJanissaries sent to al-Nabulusi from Aleppo, , explicitly mentions Kadızadelis, referring to Turkish students of fıqh and preachers (Von Schegell : ). Buehler : . Artan . Dankoff ; Aksan ; Tamari , ; Sajdi . Kafadar , ; Terzioğlu ; Akkach , , , b; Ze’evi . Masters . Recent research acknowledges a general socio-economic development, if not remarkable prosperity, from the s to the s, in Anatolia, Egypt and the Balkans. Artan b. For Europe-specific uses of the terms ‘public’ and ‘private’, contemporaneous with Habermas, see Sennett ; Duby ; Ariès . Marcus , ; Abu Lughod ; Ze’evi . Agmon ; Thys-Şenocak ; Semerdjian . Habermas . Ariès ; Sennett . For a critical treatment of these concepts in the Ottoman context,
see Kömeçoğlu Develi . . Hattox [] . Evliya Çelebi : I, a. Yılmaz . Saraçgil ; Kırlı . BOA, C. Zaptiye , /Z /. Zilfi : . Çaksu ; Rafeq : . Sirriyeh : –. Von Schlegell . Selçuk . Chester Beatty Library, MS : fol. . Kafadar . Evliya Çelebi refers to the most elegant and learned people as frequenting coffee-houses in Bursa in (: II, , fol. b). He estimated that there were seventy-five large and highly decorated coffee-houses, which had become popular when those in Istanbul were
closed. by Murad IV. Çaksu This register covers only the Galata and Kasımpaşa districts: Istanbul Municipality Library, Muallim Cevdet B. : fols. b–b (Göl ). BOA, A. DVN (Ertuğ ). Rıfat Osman () noted a few basic types on the basis of some thirty coffee-houses that he visited, which had been built between the years and in Istanbul, Edirne, Selanik, Manastır and Serez (Numan ; David ). Özkoçak () has published a coffeehouse plan dated : BOA Y.MTV. /.
— Tülay Artan — Aktepe ; Behrens-Abouseif ; Hamadeh . Meier , where table gives the number of public baths in a number of cities from to . Pools in thermal baths, like the Király bath of Budapest, are exceptions. Ahmet Refik b: . Aktepe . Evliya Çelebi : I, b–b. Kanetaki . Pick : . Işın : . Dellâks in male hamams were not just washers but young male prostitutes. The Dellâknâme-i-Dilküşâ ofexplains Dervish their Ismailservices Agha () tures and national srcins and and fees.records their names, physical fea Demirtaş . Işın : ; Düzbakar . Perhaps in figure .a, the cell depicted below the plunge pool was also a part of the bath, intended to keep the insane warm and relaxed. Sajdi . Gadelrab . Alpin : –. Ahmet Refik b: , , , , . Pellitteri ; Yüksel ; Sajdi ; Tamari . Sajdi ; Akkach a. Saydam ; for community control in Sofia, Kayseri, Aleppo and Damascus, see Gradeva ; also Tok . Marcus ; Rafeq . Ertuğ . For non-Muslim stokers in Muslim quarters, also see BOA C.SH (/Z /). Zarinebaf-Shahr . In addition to numerous MA to and PhD dissertationssicil on sthe Üsküdar court records, multiple volume editions of sixteentheighteenth-century have been published recently. Aynural ; Demirtaş . Artan . Nevertheless, in the secondary literature one can still find the repeated claim that eating out was rare in the Ottoman realm. Lewicka . Ibid. Evliya Çelebi : I, , fol. b. Sariyannis . For a beng-pusher at the Bahçekapısı hamam who was exiled to the Molova fortress: BOA C.ZB (/R /). Sariyannis . Ahmed Cavid : –. Jews were clearly targeted in this period. A Jewish woman accused of seducing young boys was exiled to Selanik: BOA C.ZB ( B ); Jewish musicians were banned from performing for women in Jewish households in the absence of their husbands: BOA C.Adliye ( R ). BOA Hatt-ı Hümayun ().
Christie’s : . BOA C. ZB (). Kermeli ; Semerdjian ; Sariyannis . Sajdi : . Masters : . Sariyannis –: . Ze’evi : . Rafeq ; Semerdjian . Ben-Naeh : ; cf. also Zarinebaf-Shahr .
— Forms and forums of expression — In line with the existing literature, Hamadeh (b) connects the phenomenon to an intensified search for leisure, entertainment and pleasure at the time. She also argues that the emergence of public gardens was a state-sponsored development which aimed to control and contain public life. This approach undermines the much more complicated process of royal lands’ dissolution into public and private property. Artan a. Behrens-Abouseif ; Raymond . Meier . Akkach : . Evliya Çelebi : I, b, a, b, b, b, a. The closest are perhaps geşt ü güzar and nüzhetgâh. Hamadeh (b: ) seems to use ‘promenade’ indiscriminately. When its water resources or produce were misused, state officials acted promptly: BOA C. Saray ; C. Saray . Shefer-Mossensohn : . Marcus : . Watenpaugh : . Karacan : , –, also , . Von Schlegell : –. Ibid.: –. Rafeq (: –) has noted boasting about homosexuality in Damascus. Sint-Nicolaas et al. . Majer b. Artan and Schick . Renda , . Zilfi . Akkach a: . See also Akkach : . Hamadeh b: . Sılay ;III. but The see Erimtan’s lateris critique () of Republican historiography on the reign of Ahmed ‘Tulip Age’ a misnomer intended to describe a cultural opening up to the West in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, accompanied by an intensified sense of leisure, entertainment and pleasure among the ruling elite as well as the public at large, displayed through courtly pageants in the parks, gardens, kiosks and palaces of the capital. Sılay : . Hamadeh (b), too, relies on the Zenânnâme miniatures, as well as on the work of nineteenth-century European artists such as Melling (d. ), Allom (d. ) and Bartlett (–) to delineate eighteenth-century gardens and public life. The styles of such artists, and what they were prepared to see and depict in the Ottoman capital, deserve more careful scrutiny. On realism in Ottoman poetry, see also Schmidt a, b. Schick ; Kuru . Hamadeh , . Studies on women’s legal position and their active participation in social and economic activities are too many to cite here. Zilfi ; Hamadeh b. Artan b. . Andrews Sılay : ; Zilfi . For clothing regulations issued in , and , see Ahmet Refik b: –, –; c: , –. Zilfi . Quataert : . Finkel (: –) has also interpreted Nevşehirli Ibrahim Paşa’s attempt to curb the new vogue as a response to uncertainties. Quataert : –; : –. Artan , b.
— Tülay Artan — Şimşek . Period chroniclers carefully noted, albeit without any note of approval, that Mehmed IV’s hunting entourage included the female members of his family. They saw this neither as promoting a new kind of social conduct, a new civility, nor as a marker of going public. Fleischer : –. Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi B. and İstanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi T. . Chester Beatty Library .
PART V
LATER OTTOMANS
CHAPTER TWENTYSEVEN
THE OLD REGIME AND THE OTTOMAN MIDDLE EAST
Ariel Salzmann
F
ew centuries in Ottoman history hold greater import for understanding the emergence of the modern Middle East than the long eighteenth century. A political chronology might trace the outset of this ‘century’ to the reforms of the Köprülü vezirs (–), launched after decades of provincial uprisings and economic turbulence. The ‘century’ would draw to a close with the regimes of Selim III (–) and Mahmud II (–). Their policies of military and fiscal consolidation triggered civil wars and revolts from Greece to Kurdistan. However, often forgotten is the fact that, between these temporal brackets, the empire’s many Middle Eastern and North African provinces remained largely intact. Despite violations and incursions along the Azeri and Iraqi frontiers, the Ottoman–Safavid treaty of Kasr-i Şirin of remained the primary point of reference until , when the treaty of Erzurum with tsarist Russia delimited the Caucasus. In North Africa, the regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli continued to respect the terms of the sultan’s suzerainty, albeit with considerable latitude in the conduct of their diplomacy and trade. Only in Yemen did the Zaydi rejection of sultanic rule prove decisive. Despite this remarkable geopolitical stability, accounts of this period have commonly viewed the crises that punctuated the end of the century, and particularly the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in –, as evidence of deeper political problems and proof of deteriorating social and economic conditions. This consensus is not limited to the scholarship of the late colonial and Cold War eras, 1 but has coloured Arab and Turkish nationalist narratives as well. Lauding the defiance of frontier magnates such as Da’ud Paşa (r. –) of Baghdad and Mehmed/Muhammad Ali Paşa 2 (r. of yet Cairo has served to defenders repudiate of a ‘Turkish’ past and identify tors–) of a nation unformed. The Istanbul-centred rule duringprogenithe late Ottoman period decried provincial power and heralded the étatisme of the Turkish Republic.3 In all these versions, conflict between the central state and local authorities was the bloody but inevitable overture to modernity. Given the densely ideological and peculiar instrumentality of these interpretations, it is one of the great accomplishments of the last three decades of historical inquiry to have restored many of the complexities and nuances to this critical period. The older notion of economic decline has been reassessed.4 Entire populations and social
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classes have emerged from the shadows. We learn that women, craftsmen, soldiers and peasants exercised great initiative and defied the injustice of statesmen and local authorities.5 Rigid institutions never shackled social change or agency.6 The judge’s court became the locus for new interpretations of the Hanafi code, kanun and custom to suit the needs of the times. 7 Although this body of research furnishes the essential ingredients for a new narrative of the long eighteenth century, greater attention to methodology and a willingness to deploy multi-disciplinary expertise to investigate critical historical questions are needed to reconstruct larger trends. 8 By default, any essay on state–society relations over the long eighteenth century, including this one, furnishes a glimpse Ottoman only Middle East. of the complex facets which defined the old regime in the
ESTABLISHING THE COORDINATES OF POLITICAL CHANGE Preconceptions as tenacious as the association between ‘imperial decline’ and state– society relations in the later Ottoman empire endure in social science theory and popular histories, despite the best endeavours of historians. Historians still hesitate to confront the social scientific paradigms directly, including the presumption of political decentralization. Although we now know that flows of currency, cadres and commerce continued to link the empire’s most distant parts,9 reconstruction of the circulatory patterns of persons and resources lags behind.10 Moreover, euphemisms such as ‘localization’ or ‘semi-autonomous’11 which have crept into the historical jargon neither displace determinism of sociological nor question normative judgements aboutthe Middle Eastern political culture theses upon which they are the based. That is, while individual studies approach universalizing claims piecemeal or highlight discrete developments within a single region, reluctance to reinterpret the empire as an interdependent whole allows larger conceptual assumptions to go unchallenged. The assumption that there is a unique, western path or, in a minor revision, multiple non-intersecting paths to modern government remains a central principle of modern political theory.12 Although too often a victim of the idée fixe of such social science theory, Ottoman history has occasionally been approached in a more systematic and critical fashion. Whatever co-ordinates of political change we might reconstruct owe much to such collective efforts, not infrequently under the sway of generations of the Annales school, with its emphasis on the integrative role of economy and geography and its rigorous analyses of social structure, exchange and material culture. Sociologists have responded to this approach, emphasizing contextual and relational approaches to capitalist development and state formation within the interactive geopolitical arenas 13
of the Mediterranean. Over the last three decades, the world-systems école has been particularly influential, providing a forum and research agenda dedicated to understanding social and economic change within the Ottoman lands, albeit with a bias towards Ottoman– European relations and capitalist transformation of agriculture. 14 Important studies on port cities, manufacturing, trade and epidemics have brought into relief other key aspects of Ottoman demography, commerce and urban structures over the eighteenth century.15 From the perspective of institutional change, investigations into relations
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between the Ottoman empire and France, its principal European trading partner and ally, have yielded valuable insights into the role of both diplomacy and exchange. Ethem Eldem’s mapping of trans-Mediterranean financial transactions during the eighteenth century has unveiled a hitherto unappreciated dimension of state formation, by examining forms of credit and bullion flows as well as the widespread usage of foreign instruments to transfer funds within the empire itself.16 A re-examination of exchange relations has helped to isolate the cultural impact of overseas merchant colonies on local populations. European trade went hand in hand with missionary activity. Over the long eighteenth century, missionaries were successful in convincing local churchmen and laity to join the Catholic Uniates, a process which not only drew these churches closer to Rome but also widened the political gap between Christian subjects and their Muslim and Jewish neighbours.17 The changing sectarian balance was not a phenomenon restricted to the Mediterranean coastline. Other Catholic orders, such as the Carmelites, traversed Anatolia in their march towards Iran and established satellite missions in Ottoman Diyarbekir and Basra. French patronage of the Catholic orders only deepened the political divisions between new Catholics and the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Gregorian churches. In order to stem conversion, Orthodox ecclesiastics enlisted the repressive arm of the state to punish lapsed parishioners with galley slavery and banishment. Yet European influence was only one factor in the changing relationships between Muslim citydwellers and tribal confederations, or between the politically dominant Sunnis and the Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Assyrian, Shi’i, Jewish, Roma and Yezidi communities of Syria, Egypt, Kurdistan, Iraq and Arabia.18 The cultural and institutional dimensions of interactions between the Ottoman state and foreign powers should not obscure the impact of Mediterranean-wide conditions. The ‘ecological turn’ in world-systems analysis inaugurated by Faruk Tabak’s The Waning of the Mediterranean() helps resituate the Ottoman experience within a global time frame. In Tabak’s account the long eighteenth century is the culmination of the ‘little ice age’ which began in the latemedieval period. This climate conjuncture explains hitherto puzzling imperial policy decisions and institutional changes. Shifts in capital away from the Mediterranean towards the breadbaskets of Northern Europe suggest that the empire’s determined westward offensive owed as much to mundane motivations as to religious ideology. By factoring the adaptations of Mediterranean peasants, pastoralists, guildsmen and merchants into administrative responses, important reinterpretations of the underlying premises of state–society relations must follow. First, the forces that drove peasants from coastal areas into the hills from the celalı period onwards included the increasingly precarious nature of low-land cultivation. Indeed, peasant responses, as Suraiya Faroqhi has often observed, remained prag19
matic.hasRather rebelling against their rulers, resorted to what Jamesand C. Scott termedthan the ‘weapons of the weak’: farmersthey avoided rapacious bandits government officials by flight. Yet to consider the retreat of the peasantry from valleys and coastlines as merely a survival strategy would be mistaken. Farmers cultivated hillside crops from the Atlantic for subsistence and for their commercial value; they relocated to villages near expanding cities because these afforded proximate markets as well as better protection from marauding bandits or pastoralists. Families engaged in by-employment in spinning and cloth-weaving or raised pack animals for growing caravan traffic.20
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Second, ‘classical’ Ottoman property conventions and prebendal assignments did not simply decay from corruption or bureaucratic disuse. Rather, administrative practices gradually conformed to social and economic realities. Given the transformation of the agrarian economy, from cereal cultivation to mixed crops and animal husbandry, and from population displacement, the state could no longer rely on older land surveys and revenue estimates, much less apportion taxes from these to support a landed cavalry. That is, the sipahi did not disappear, but all too often his timar or tax assignment did, under the brunt of decreasing yields, peasant flight and increasing fiscal demands. Greater material inducements and less regulation rendered the tax farmer – often members of locally garrisoned Janissaries or the urban gentry – better equipped to pursue the peasant and the pastoralist. When this, too, proved unworkable, the state conceded self-taxing rights to villagers, who paid their obligations in lump sums. Third, the vagaries of climate, and with it crop failure, limited the ability of local magnates in Aegean and Mediterranean coastal areas to accumulate capital from plantation-like commercial farms and large-scale share-cropping estates ( çiftlik).21 Instead, these power-brokers coupled agricultural pursuits with large-scale moneylending.22 By advancing peasants money to pay taxes and purchase necessities such as seed, they profited from the insecurity of agricultural yields and mounting peasant debt. During the bitterly cold seasons of the mid-eighteenth century, which destroyed grain crops and brought starvation and pandemic, cities turned against the countryside. The townsmen of Mosul, Aleppo and Diyarbekir turned away starving villagers at the city gates. In Damascus the ayan-paşa As’ad al-‘Azam robbed what remained of peasant stocks to feed townsmen.23 Plague, which visited with horrifying regularity, reconnoitred Alexandria and Cairo seven years before Napoleon’s invasion of . 24 Clearly, too, these macro-environmental factors inform the longer-term shifts in power between city and countryside and between central state officials and local agents. The growth of an urban middle class during the century lent Middle Eastern cities a social and political coherence despite these natural disasters, the irregularity of governors’ visits and the changing fiscal demands of the central state. 25 New consumer patterns and long-distance trade links between the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean spurred commercial manufacturing. Northern Europeans consumed raw, finished and semi-finished commodities, including dye-stuffs, cotton yarn and mohair textiles produced in cities from Alexandria to Aintab and Ankara. Wealthy urban residents carved out garden plots in the suburbs of Anatolian cities like Bursa and Tokat. The eighteenth century witnessed an unprecedented conversion of agricultural lands into mortmain estates ( evkaf) in northern Syria. Depending on the front, environmental conditions constrained the empire’s military logistics. The northward shift of the agrarian economy provided new opportuni26 foodstuffs, pack animals and fodder to armies composed tieslarge for those whodivisions. furnished of infantry It is little wonder that the great magnates arose in those regions closest to the theatres of warfare: the ayan and derebey of Rumeli and Black Sea Anatolia parlayed access to resources into new political status.27 By contrast, military recruitment in more sparsely populated regions of West Asia and the Tigris–Euphrates required other defensive strategies and occasionally the arming of urban populations, both Muslim and non-Muslim, against bandit attacks.28 Intermittent warfare with the Safavids’ successor dynasties, the Afshars, Zands and Qajars, curtailed Istanbul’s plans to settle tribal confederates, as these populations supplied cavalry for campaigns. In
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the Syrian desert, in Upper Egypt and along the Kurdish frontiers, Istanbul relied on a semi-permanent mobilization of pastoral populations to guard trans-imperial communications, commerce, and the pilgrimage caravans to the Hijaz. In compensating for settlement patterns and restricted transportation in West Asia, the empire applied tried and tested policies of ‘provisionism’.29 With meeting military priorities and satisfying the consumption patterns of the Ottoman elite as its primary goals, provisionism entailed channelling inter-regional and long-distance trade through administrative cities in order to maintain supply and to facilitate collection of tariffs.30 Although local manufacturers and farmers were pressed to provide for state needs during wartime, the mutual dependency between these producers and the state allowed room for negotiation. Rural folk were commissioned to staff post-stations and protect caravansarays in exchange for tax immunities. Urban guilds which produced sailcloth for war at or near cost were rewarded with guarantees of an adequate supply of raw materials. Local courts supported the prerogatives of guild masters and were vigilant in preventing unincorporated and unskilled producers, including women, from undermining guild monopolies over production. 31 Provisionism reinforced the social and political clout of the guilds in Ottoman cities well into the next century. 32
THE OTTOMAN OLD REGIME: A NEXUS OF INTERESTS Establishing the Mediterranean-wide economic and institutional co-ordinates of the long eighteenth century does not absolve historians from the daunting task of identifying the specificity of the Middle East’s political organization. Scholars of the postclassical period have not shied away from the question of the changing nature of the Ottoman state.33 Yet, in some senses, the very attempt to pin down the ‘state’ in an imperial context of this scale may be an exercise in futility. Any taxonomy or classification of this early modern polity – whether ‘dynastic’ state, enlightened despotism or absolutism – to the extent that it pretends to define a structure that responded to diverse populations and conditions spanning continents and centuries belies historical realities. The Ottoman old regime straddled old and new.34 On the one hand, mutatis mutandis, the Ottoman ‘state’ retained in the eyes of beholders, near and far, discernible characteristics and links with the past which were more than simply force of habit, discourse or the beneficence of its imperial elite. 35 On the other hand, although the provincial ‘state’ endured in classic institutions such as the timar system until the nineteenth-century tanzimat, actual administrative practice was turned over to relatively recent, contractual agents who quantitatively, and hence qualitatively, transformed the very nature of the relationship between state and society. By referring to the complex of state-like qualities of Ottoman rule as an old regime, 36
we recognize an entity which wasofficial, far more extensive thanofthe state. Themight old regime was the sum both of the chartered cadres thecentral bureaucracy, military units and state judiciary and of all those who contributed to its continued functioning. However, its centralized apparatus, which after was again firmly rooted in Istanbul’s city quarters, remained limited in its reach and scope, despite the plurality of force it enjoyed and its continued symbolic legitimacy. Under the old regime, rule referred to the intersection of hierarchies of cadres, organizations of command and techniques of influence. Beyond the site of the dynasty and court, the imperial city served as the base for military personnel, bureaucrats,
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grandees, palaces and parade grounds. It housed great concentrations of wealth and productive capacity. Ruling was also an information industry, a clearing house of techniques and terms, a keeper of accounts and records. Rights and privileges were inscribed in the Istanbul archives; hierarchies were articulated in public rituals and honours, honorary robes and pageants. Importantly, power was redistributed in the form of such writs, as well as in a central bank of credit and specie, which linked central state elites to provincial partners. 37 In the eyes of its provincial subjects, the state, as it existed under the old regime, was no mere abstraction. Peasants and townsmen witnessed the passage of imperial armies
en route to distant regions, the retinues of incoming governors, inspectors, tax agents from the fisc and others entrusted with gathering men, beasts and materiel in kind for the front. Treasury officials collected the compensatory military service taxes from non-serving members of the old cavalry hierarchy. In Anatolia and Syria, sancakbeyis and sipahis were fixtures of village life or joined the nobility of the cities. The kadı’s court remained for Muslim, Christian and Jew alike a ubiquitous and abiding expression of imperial sovereignty. In some frontier areas, such as the Kurdish hükümets of the south-eastern provinces, Istanbul’s establishment of an Hanafi judgeship (in a Shafi‘i culture) preceded the formal division into districts (sancaks). Although the university of al-Azhar produced eminently qualified judges for the Egyptian courts, the Ottoman legal school’s hegemony stretched into other areas of Maliki-dominated North Africa. Over the seventeenth and, particularly, the eighteenth century, the kadı and his tribunal picked up the slack between older and newer forms of rule. The judge acquired an increasing competency and range of responsibilities. Handbooks helped prepare him to deal with the finer points of statute and novel forms of contracting and taxation. The court recorded the apportioning of cash taxes, including the avarız, among towns and villages and established the liabilities, based on personal wealth, of nonMuslims under the post- poll tax (cizye). Customs tariffs, market prices and commercial taxation remained under the kadı’s supervision. He forwarded complaints against officials and adjudicated blame in civil suits, while also functioning as notary of records who registered incoming orders, receipts for payments and contracts. The judge was intimately involved in family matters: in divorce, inheritance and other property arrangements, including evkaf.38 In the absence of consuls of the European nation in question, he ruled on treaties. The kadı thus represented imperial rule in the provinces, or, as Najwa al-Qattan put it with respect to the Damascus tribunal, the ‘territorialization of the law’. 39 But his court also expressed the limits of rule. While the kadı’s competence in areas of jurisprudence increased, his powers to enforce the law did not grow commensurately. Imposition of severe punishments, including death suspects penalty, to remained task of secular (‘urfi ) physical powers such as the governor. To the summon court orthe to carry out sentences, the kadı depended on military officers, including Janissaries, to arrest, detain or banish offenders. If Istanbul developed specialized units which functioned as servants of the court and as an urban police, 40 in the provinces and the countryside the division of labour between law and enforcement remained ill-defined. Further, efforts to rein in the Janissaries in Istanbul, and to maintain an equilibrium between those who judged and those who enforced the law in the capital, had unforeseen consequences. The number of Janissaries in provincial cities more than
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tripled during the first half of the eighteenth century as Istanbul shed unwanted military units and officers. In Egypt, an Anatolian immigrant and janissary commander, Muhammad Kazdağlı, following the Cairene manner, established a powerful retinue which dominated the other six janissary corps and eliminated local rivals. Yet not all janissary contingents came out on top. Once the new governor of central Iraq, Hasan Paşa (r. –), and his son and successor, Ahmed Paşa (r. –), established their own household of military retainers, Baghdad’s garrison became obsolete. The corps resettled in Mosul.41 New to these societies, military elites employed a variety of devices, both symbolic and social, with which they legitimized otherwise dubious mandates to exercise power. While some developed hybrid identities grounded in religion or noble provenance, other officers clung to their Turkic ethnicity as a badge of privilege, as did the Algerian corps, who replenished their ranks strictly from Anatolian recruits.42 Conversely, the Janissaries in Tunis chose assimilation, freely admitting into their ranks the offspring of marriages between officers and local women. In Damascus and Aleppo, the janissary corps replicated themselves along parallel organizational lines, all the while distinguishing the ‘local’ (yerliyye) order from outsiders. Yet both corps claimed commanding officers in Istanbul.43 In fact, almost all provincial units, including the Kazdağlı beys of Cairo, maintained close ties with an Istanbul commander, the palace or other imperial elites.44 In addition to respecting the military hierarchy, officers posted in Kurdistan and Syria served as on-site agents for important central state households, the vezirial kapı.45 Here it is important to recognize the similarities and differences between the provincial and Istanbul-based ‘imperial’ kapı. In both instances, the kapı fostered interdependence among leaders and subordinates. It served as a means of capital accumulation, allowing the elite who faced expropriation after death to perpetuate their wealth and connections beyond a single generation. Despite such parallels in operation and organizational form, the imperial household – led by a high-ranking administrative, military or naval official – possessed a superior capacity because of its position within the sovereign order. Anchored by a permanent staff in Istanbul, the imperial kapı welded associates and clients into cross-cutting power networks which radiated across ‘traditional’ chartered estates and into multiple provinces through a variety of agents. The imperial kapı remained a pillar of old regime rule. The need to integrate and support its many members entrained other institutional developments. Among these characteristically old regime innovations was the lifelong revenue contract ( malikane mukataa). As in the French tax-farming system, life leases represented a pre-modern form of ‘privatization’ of state resources which spurred a notable expansion of the empire’s financial infrastructure. An initial allocation of approximately million kuruş of revenue receipts lifeimperial leases inbudget. the first Nevertheless, decade of the the eighteenth century represented only a auctioned fraction ofasthe state put some of the most valuable high-yielding revenues in the Balkans and central Anatolia at the disposition of the central state elite.46 Imperial households relied upon Christian and Jewish bankers and bookkeepers, who maintained accounts, furnished down payments for new contracts at the treasury and covered operating expenses, and upon local stewards and sub-contractors, who collected rents and transferred funds in letters of credit, cash or goods to Istanbul. Subdividing shares of large contracts both cemented ties between households and paid salaries.
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The auction, administration and remittances of the largest life-lease contracts on state revenues represent a veritable microcosm of the old regime’s system of rule. The elite household and retainers of the pashas were only some of the individuals who benefited from these contracts. The annual remittances on some of the empire’s most valuable tax farms were earmarked as salaries and stipends for other state cadres. For example, the yearly income of the life leases on the taxes on tobacco, snuff and coffee which entered the ports of the eastern Mediterranean was distributed to the imams and religious dignitaries who staffed the largest mosques of Edirne, Istanbul and Bursa. Over the century, both this state-supported ulema and their female dependants – widows and unmarried daughters – enjoyed daily stipends from contracted state assets which also maintained vezirial kapı.47
VE RN AC UL AR GO VE RNMEN T Istanbul’s central apparatus, its cadres and institutions, continued to rule the Middle Eastern provinces throughout the long eighteenth century. Yet rule was only one dimension of old regime power. Actual governance, which I have termed ‘vernacular government’, entailed the ordinary, quotidian exercise of political power in the cities or in the countryside.48 Those who controlled day-to-day affairs were often not members of official organizations but took their place in these provincial apparatuses via the incremental changes that occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and compromises between state and society. Istanbul regulated relations within and between vernacular governments in the Middle East and North Africa directly and indirectly, by dispatching governors and other officials from Istanbul or by cultivating competition among rival provincial elites and their households. 49 Mapping vernacular governments across the geopolitical structure of the empire allows us to consider some basic sociological differences between them. At the frontiers of empire where security concerns were paramount, such as in Iraq and Egypt, military cadres took charge and often used their geopolitical roles as a means of wresting greater independence from the centre. In the Middle Eastern interior, a distinct political zone shaped by large commercial and manufacturing cities and towns stretching from Palestine and northern Syria to eastern Anatolia, governments tended to be less militarized. The local sources of wealth, historic ties with the centre, the presence of major religious institutions, and the importance of the guilds and mercantile classes, as well as the existence of earlier forms of administration, often yielded a more inclusive form of administration. Here the regulating mechanism was found neither in the janissary barracks nor in the governor’s compound. It depended on a relatively new fiscal institution, an intendancy or ‘ferme générale’, composed of a block of tax farms and including somethe of province’s the most important cash revenue in and around administrative capital. sources, urban and rural, located Despite analogous form and function, official documents refer to these intendancies with different terms. Depending on fiscal precedents, the ‘ ferme générale’ might be called a defterlarlık, a voyvodalık or a muhassıllık.50 The largest share of the intendancy resembled the classic mudaraba partnership.51 It paired one or more central state investors with an active partner, the intendant who was paid by salary or with a share of the profits. Diyarbekir’s voyvodalık was cobbled together from a variety of revenues which had provided the salaries for now defunct offices, as well as rural revenues from crown
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lands. In the primary investor in the voyvodalık was none other than the imperial treasurer, while the voyvoda, Isma’il Beg, was a scion of the Kurdish Milan (Millu) tribe.52 Over the century, the intendancy’s jurisdiction grew at the expense of the governor’s authority. Diyarbekir’s intendant collected important cash taxes and revenues from tax farms, oversaw the customs station and raised troops; he disbursed salaries and subsidies to ulema and sheykhs of the most important Sufi confraternities. Although such intendancies were also found in Ottoman Europe, the distinguishing features of those institutions in the Middle East lie in the multiplicity of relatively small life leases of minimal value of which they were composed. Many of these small life leases were the result of a piecemeal conversion of crown lands, tribal dues and other agrarian revenues into short-term tax farms. Rather than being reassembled into large blocks of taxes, these small assets were auctioned off to the gentry separately. Encouraging local participation in tax collection and administration was the stated intent of the life-lease system: the edict authorizing empire-wide application of the life lease made no mention of highly placed elites. Rather, it referred to the positive role that the ayan (i.e., Muslim gentry) of eastern Anatolia, Syria, Kurdistan and Iraq would play in restoring agricultural lands to prosperity. Long term, quasi-proprietary self-interest, with guarantees for inheritance, argued the edict, would end the vicious cycle of ruined fields and peasant flight provoked by the avarice of short-term tax farmers.53 If the central state’s promotion of life-leasing derived primarily from financial expediency, the provincial gentry did not ignore the opportunity to become imperial partners. The life lease ennobled a venal enterprise: it accorded the gentry privileges and responsibilities on a par with those enjoyed by a sipahi with respect to a timar. Unlike the three- to six-year term of previous contracts, the gentry could be assured of state support for their continued claims as they divided shares among family members and passed down contracted assets on villages and fields to their children. Entrusted with state resources, the gentry became an integral part of vernacular government. As a political and sociological process, contracting blurred the lines between the state elite, or askeri estate, and the provincial gentry, or beledi (as they were described in the Arab provinces) estate.54 However comparable the forms of provincial governance, particularly those within the Middle Eastern interior, understanding the make-up of vernacular government requires examination of a single intendancy. Aleppo, one of the major entrepôts between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean and a city of some , by the end of the century, presents one of the better studied cases. Gentry families assumed an increasing role in local government. The auctions served as a redistributive hub which legitimated their participation. The records of the first provincial auction, dating from , reveal that, initially, central state elitesmany and provincially based andand bureaucrats dominated the bidding. Nonetheless, other invesaskeri tors appear to have been drawn from local society and included members of Aleppo’s homegrown ulema. Six years later, the number of provincial contractors increased: in , the contractors without formal affiliation to the central state outnumbered askeri contractors three to one.55 Over the century, participation in tax collection and rural administration by the urban gentry and ulema continued to grow along with the capital they invested in Aleppo’s life leases.56 Despite unpredictable conditions, the agrarian economy held
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great attraction for these families. Arable land in adjacent districts was converted into
evkaf at a rapid rate in the eighteenth century.57 Villages supplied staple goods for the urban population and in areas like Antakya produced such cash crops as cotton and tobacco. Although scholars have identified a handful of prominent gentry clans who, alongside the local Janissaries, dominated the agricultural sector through large numbers of life leases,58 because of the variable scale and value of malikane-ized revenues on villages and fields, the auctions of small rural tax farms continued to furnish an entry point into the rural economy for individuals of more modest background. Another ‘snapshot’ of Aleppo’s governing classes is furnished by a register of , which records the names and rural assets of life-lease shareholders. One notable change in their make-up is the commanding presence of religious dignitaries ( seyyid, şeyh and efendi). The value of their investments had reached , kuruş, or per cent of the sureties in the local system. Now they rivalled the collective rural assets of the local gendarmerie. Janissary officers, who repeatedly used their control over the city’s food supply to their political advantage, 59 held , kuruş in investments. The gentry, provincial elites who belonged neither to the ranks of local ulema nor to any central state cadre, held the smallest portion of rural investments: , kuruş (. per cent). Overall, tax farms tended to be held in partnerships. Of life leases on agrarian revenue sources, only ninety-three were held by a single contractor.60 As table . suggests, the number of partners in a given lease was inversely proportional to the value of the investment. Table . also illustrates the different scale of economic (and political) involvement of rural contractors in the intendancy of Aleppo. A breakdown of lease-holders based on the value of their investments is deliberately intended to counterbalance a bias in analysis which has favoured preconceived cultural cleavages, specifically the tendency to divide Middle Eastern elites along ‘religious’/‘non-religious’ or central state/provincial lines.61 Instead, by viewing this population in terms of their investments, we can better appreciate how the life-lease system both maintained and subverted hierarchies of power and privilege. On the one hand, the lease-holders of the upper tier enjoyed undeniable economic dominance: individually, their average investment was more than three times that of the middle tier and twenty-eight times greater than that of shareholders of the lowest tier. The lowest tier of investors held only per cent of the wealth invested in rural life leases in Aleppo. On the other hand, in terms of sheer numbers, the lower two tiers represented the vast majority of life-lease holders. Fully half of all lease-holders in the province were found in the lowest tier, holding contracts valued below kuruş. When cultural and political profiles are added to this economic breakdown, we can better appreciate the profound occupational heterogeneity of Aleppo’s governing Table . Shares in rural-agrarian malikane tax farms in Aleppo,
Value in kuruş
Number of shareholders
% of total
Value of sureties
% of total
High: + Middle: – Low: –
% % %
, , ,.
% % %
Source: BOA, Maliyeden Müdevver Defterleri, no. , pp. –.
— The old regime and the Ottoman Middle Eas
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classes. Although the central state elite (largely resident in Istanbul) retained control over the most valuable provincial resources, the lower tiers were marked by relative parity of investments among culturally and politically distinguished groups, all of whom were resident in the city itself or in neighbouring towns or villages. The middle tier was the most diverse: the ulema and eşraf (with an average of . kuruş per person) held about per cent of all investments, while the gentry (an average of . kuruş per person) and Janissaries (averaging . kuruş per person) roughly split the remaining two-thirds (i.e., per cent) of investments. These fiscal records have, admittedly, a limited utility in understanding the political sociology of the Middle Eastern provinces. They cannot fully illuminate the complexity of ties binding the gentry, the ulema, the Janissaries and central state personnel. The increasing prominence of Aleppo’s ulema among rural contractors may be due to their relations with the city’s müfti, the nakibüleşraf or the kadıs.62 Although the web of social and political relations among these actors remains only partially documented, the intendancy’s records do strongly suggest that the life-lease system contributed to a political process which transformed the relationship between Istanbul and provincial society. It enhanced the status and influence of Muslim contractors of more modest social backgrounds in and beyond Aleppo while giving them a real stake in the Ottoman order. This ‘petty gentry’, 63 no less than the sipahi, governors, Janissaries, judges and great provincial families, governed the empire.
CONCLUSION: ON THE EVE OF THE
TANZIMAT
This essay has offered a geographically nuanced perspective on state–society relations in the eighteenth-century Middle East. The circulation of goods, credit and specie globally, as well as within the empire, set some of the basic parameters of rule. One of the most profound influences on the political structure of an agrarian empire appears to have been the ‘little ice age’, a long climatic cycle characterized by lower temperatures and changing rainfall patterns which lasted into the nineteenth century. It restricted possibilities for revenue collection and dictated the zones of conflict with neighbouring states. Central state officials responded to new material conditions with policies of provisionism to assure supply-lines and privatization schemes to generate revenues. New actors in the provinces were drawn into local government as part-time soldiers, suppliers of war materiel, and long-term fiscal contractors. The viability of the old regime depended on the elaboration of a partnership between those who ruled and those who governed. As a nexus of interests, Istanbul ruled through traditional means, including control over the administration of courts and the determination of claims. The imperial centre preserved its control over information, and specie. For one much of the as century, astutebyvezirs and admirals couldprivilege, play off credit regional elites against another, exemplified the willingness of the pasha-bey of Tunis, Hammuda ibn ‘Ali ibn Husain (r. –), to mobilize against the Karamanlis of Tripoli in and to contribute forces to suppress the revolt in Crete. 64 No matter how autonomous they appeared to foreign observers, the great magnates of the Black Sea remained beholden to their Istanbul bankers.65 Yet in other parts of the Middle East, such as Aleppo, the intendancy exemplified a vernacular government, in which power was more widely dispersed and contested.
— Ariel Salzmann —
If we seek to understand why the partnership between those who ruled and those who governed began to dissolve, we must look beyond personalities to the upswing of the Mediterranean agrarian economy in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. In Egypt, Ali Bey’s programme of repressing the Bedouin and expanding cash crop production, perhaps more than his alliance with foreign powers, signalled the end of an era. These agricultural initiatives laid the foundations of Mehmed Ali Paşa’s later state-building.66 Commercial olive oil production subsidized the regencies of Tunis and Tripoli when returns from the traditional enterprise of piracy and slaving waned.67 Whether or not they capitalized on new opportunities, provincial elites in Syria and Anatolia had little reason to relinquish hard-won positions in local governance to central state officials and officers.68 More conciliatory policies from Istanbul at the end of the long eighteenth century might have permitted the empire’s transition from a de facto power-sharing agreement into a constitutional federalism.69 Faced with escalating costs for men and materiel to confront Russia, the architects of the new regime chose to concentrate power through the creation of new military units and the retraction of the life leases. In doing so, Istanbul severed the networks which undergirded households, bound cadres to one another, and tied the central state elites to their provincial partners. Despite his striking an agreement with leading magnates in , Mahmud II’s systematic campaigns against provincial governments sent an unambiguous message of the new regime’s objectives: cities revolted against Istanbul-appointed governors and peasants rose up against new taxes.70 Elimination of the janissary corps in left critical areas of administration understaffed and may well have facilitated Ibrahim Paşa’s invasion of Palestine and Syria in . Without reconstructing a century of self-governance by magnates, townsmen, villagers, tribesmen and the gentry, neither social scientists nor historians will be able to grasp the multiple political contingencies of the Middle East’s past. For now, it suffices to reiterate that the successes of the tanzimat period which gave rise to constitutionalism and citizenship were not the work of an Istanbul elite alone.71 Of course, Ottoman statesmen were loath to admit the role of their subjects in the empire’s modernization. In , when the governor-general Mehmet Emin Rauf Paşa arrived in Aleppo in search of conscripts for the sultan’s new army, he disdained the self-possessed air of the urbane young men of the city’s middle classes. Their unwillingness to submit to military command was owing, he opined, to the fact that they, like most of the local population, ‘still relish[ed] the taste of their previous freedom’. 72 Indeed, it was precisely this ‘freedom’ which prepared a generation to take up the administrative and legislative responsibilities of the first tanzimat advisory councils two decades later.73
NOTES Cf. Gibb and Bowen ; Lewis . Abou-el-Haj ; Fahmy . Alkan : . Owen ; Genç . Faroqhi ; Zilfi . Genç ; Gran ; Baer . Gerber .
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Zarinebaf et al. . New interpretations of mass movements, such as Wahhabism (Haj ), permit more sustained and comparative research on the ideologies and religious networks linking Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Pamuk : . On the collections of legal, bureaucratic and pious foundation primary sources available, see Hoexter b. Compare Açıkel with Hathaway and Barbir : . . Compare Sachsenmaier and Eisenstadt with I slamog˘lu and Perdue . Wallerstein ; . . Tilly . Cf. I slamog˘lu-Inan ; Keyder and Tabak .
Raymond –; Panzac ; Eldem et al. : –. Eldem . Masters . Abdullah ; Winter . Faroqhi . Khoury . Veinstein ; Keyder and Tabak . Faroqhi . Grehan : . Panzac . Hourani ; Meriwether . Sakaog˘lu [] . Nagata [] ; Aksan . Murphey : . Genç . Erim . Akarlı ; Zarinebaf .
Chalcraft :; –. E.g., Piterberg Abou-el-Haj [] ; Berktay and Faroqhi . Salzmann . Bonner et al. . Salzmann : –. Ibid.: ch. . Ergene . Al-Qattan : . Zarinebaf ; Salzmann . Mantran : . Shuval c and his essay, chapter , in this volume. Rafeq . Hathaway . Abou-el-Haj : –. Genç . Salzmann : ch. . Ibid.: ch. . .
Inalcık . Bes¸irli . Çızakça . BOA, Bab-i Defteri Bas¸muhasebe Kalemi Defterleri, no. . Genç : , . Grehan : ; Abdel Nour : ; Meriwether : –. BOA, Maliyeden Müdevver Defterleri [MMD] nos. and . BOA, MMD nos. (–), (), (). Aleppo’s malikane tax farm sureties rose from , kurus¸ in to , kurus¸ in in comparison with Damascus, which rose from , kurus¸ in to , kurus¸ in .
— Ariel Salzmann — Thieck . Muhammad Çelebi Tahazade, a religious dignitary and former nakibüles¸râf, alone possessed . per cent of total malikane contracts. The great gentry (the Tahazade, S¸ahbandarzade and Hünkarlızade families) held more than per cent of the total malikane contracts on agriculture (ibid.: ). Meriwether . The absence of other names does not preclude subcontractors. In fact, many life leases were subcontracted to others. Cf. Hourani : –. Meriwether : –.
Meriwether Moalla .. S¸ahin . Cuno . Panzac : . Akarlı . Salzmann : –. Rood : , . Abu-Manneh . Erdem : . Thompson .
CHAPTER TWENTYEIGHT
THE T RANSF ORMATI ON OF THE OTTOMAN FISCAL REGIME, c .
Michael Ursinus
A
t the turn of the seventeenth century the Ottoman empire entered a period of accelerated change which had significant financial, economic, socio-political and, by necessity, fiscal implications. The -year span between and initially saw a shift away from the centralist policy of the ‘classical’ Ottoman way towards an acknowledgement of the need for the helping hand of the ‘middle man’. There then followed, towards the end of the period, a renewed attempt to ‘cut out the middle man’, seen as someone who had not been slow in holding out his hand to receive or simply to take what he considered he deserved in compensation for his services. This attempt required a retightening of the grip of the centre over the periphery and the establishment of the assertive power of the ‘modern state’ to deal with ‘traditional society’. Both developments gathered momentum under the westernizing and centralizing policies of the mid-nineteenth-century tanzimat (‘reorderings’), particularly from around . In this -year period of comprehensive transformation, the Ottoman fiscal regime underwent fundamental change in at least three respects: first, the type and volume of revenue it raised; second, the question of by and for whom revenue was collected; and, third, the fiscal principles on which it was based as time went on. These central aspects of the transformation of the tax-raising system from around to will be sketched in broad outline, with detail and contemporary comments drawn from local case studies. INFLATION AND TAX FARMING
in theearly The past,seventeenth many historians centuryhave marks seen a turning clear evidence point inofOttoman Ottomanhistory ‘decline’. in which, More recently, the ‘general crisis of the seventeenth century’ model has been suggested as a framework within which to reconsider these developments as aspects of a global process rather than simply the product of Ottoman weakness and ineptitude. 1 There is, however, little controversy as to what the main characteristics of this period are. In her excellent study on tax collection and finance administration in the Ottoman empire between and , from which much of the following data is taken, Linda Darling sums up the principal features of the period as follows:
— Michael Ursinus —
a revolution in prices and the value of money caused by the influx of gold and silver from the New World, an economic downturn after the prosperity of the sixteenth century, the financial demands of an expanding bureaucracy and military force, a large number of mostly unsuccessful revolts occurring almost simultaneously in the s and s, and a significant ideological shift.2 Of first significance, both by chronology and by force of impact, are the initially steady but subsequently rather sudden and steep rises in prices and a fall in the value of money after a period of stability in the first half of the sixteenth century. Originally, in the fourteenth century,bythere were ofakçe principal Ottoman silver to the Venetian gold ducat; the middle the (the sixteenth century akçe werecoin) needed to equal one gold coin. During the s, however, the value of the akçe was halved again, and in subsequent decades the gold piece was occasionally exchanged for as many as akçe. Prices increased accordingly, with the steepest rises recorded for some years before, and immediately after, the turn of the century – i.e., in – and again in –, both of which were periods of substantial military expenditure. 3 However, looking at the inflation figures for the entire century from to , we find that the inflation rate for silver itself ( per cent) was much lower than that for the akçe ( per cent), an average per year of . per cent compared with per cent. During the period –, the era of highest price rises, the inflation figures for silver ( per cent) and for the akçe ( per cent) averaged . per cent and . per cent per annum, respectively.4 During the three-year period around the first official devaluation of the akçe in , prices in akçe doubled while silver inflation peaked at (only) per cent, indicating a dramatic demand for coinage, especially for akçe, caused by a number of factors. Among these were population growth, increasing urbanization, and the enlarged volume of commercial exchange, which led to increased monetarization of the economy and the tax system. Even though this higher inflation was relatively short-lived, it seriously disrupted the monetary system, causing fundamental changes in the post-classical fiscal system. Overvaluation of the akçe led to widespread counterfeiting and clipping in an attempt to adjust it to the market value of the silver content. As full-size, unaltered akçe became increasingly scarce, people lost confidence in the official coinage, causing prices to fluctuate wildly. The inevitable price increases affected the government’s budget by raising costs for the military, the palace and pious foundations, creating huge deficits. This precipitated the government’s major devaluation of the akçe in – to its approximate market rate.5 Particularly during the extended military campaigns in Iran (–), which resulted in considerable losses in men and materiel, the government budget failed to keep pace with inflation, despite the levying of annual income extraordinary taxes; both had normally real income exceeded and real expenditure, expenditures after decreased. , andWhile throughout before the seventeenth century, nearly every year saw a deficit. In the central budget suffered a shortfall of ,, akçe, although provincial budget surpluses helped to reduce this in practice to , akçe.6 The year saw the largest deficit, million akçe. It was only after that these deficits disappeared, due to some extent, apparently, to the introduction of the life-term tax farm ( malikane iltizam), which helped the treasury to keep the budget balanced as long as major wars were avoided.7
— The transformation of the Ottoman fiscal regime —
Extending the practice of farming out state revenue by means of iltizam created a new class of tax farmers (mültezim) with responsibility for large shares of the public revenue. This class consisted of state officials such as administrative and military personnel as well as religious functionaries, private entrepreneurs like merchants, local elites, well-to-do farmers, widows, members of tribal and non-Muslim confessional groups, and slaves. However, tax farming did not stop the budgetary deficits from rising, even though, as a ‘high-risk, high-yield investment’, the putting out of mukataas (tax farms) to the highest bidder seemed an appropriate means further ‘to centralize and maximize revenue, to monetarize the tax system, to transfer collection risks, and to seekstill, societal support by granting privileges torevenues a wider generated range of people’. More important tax farming ‘could tap commercial by urbanization’. However, though we know little about the quantitative aspect of iltizam, it has been argued that the growth of iltizam revenue possibly did no more than keep pace with inflation.8 Nor would the increase in the volume of the traditional poll tax, the cizye, have made a real difference to budget deficits. Detailed surveys intended to keep a periodic record of the empire’s non-Muslim taxpayers liable to cizye continued to be executed beyond the turn of the seventeenth century, administered by a newly created government department, the poll-tax accounting bureau (cizye muhasebesi kalemi). Traditionally, the majority of poll-tax collectors had been members of the standing cavalry regiments of the imperial household, a group which appears to have gained total control over this activity by , at the expense of palace and financial officials. Soon afterwards, however, even if a nominal official from the cavalry regiments was named as collector, in practice such assignments were gradually given to others, leaving the members of the standing cavalry regiments to dominate instead the collection of avarız (see below). However, here too, from about , their majority was eventually replaced by men from the palace and their retinues, as well as provincial office-holders. By the midseventeenth century the cizye was frequently put out to tax farming to help increase the volume reaching the treasury, as was the collection of avarız in the form of ocaklık (long-term revenue assignments), with collecting rights apparently sold even to local residents for a lump sum (maktu).9 In addition, the rates for cizye and avarız were raised. In the seventy years between and , during which inflation reached its highest point, the nominal rate of the cizye can be cautiously calculated as having gone up by between and per cent, with considerable variations according to location. Across the same period, the nominal inflation rate of the akçe is computed by Barkan as per cent: ‘thus, at this time the increase of the cizye ordinarily did not keep pace with the rate of inflation’.10 Looking at the century – as a whole, the growth in the cizye rate would akçe appear haveover outstripped inflation thenot by a factor of twothe at its highest, or atolittle one at itsthe lowest. Butrate thisofwas enough to counter deficits. Darling’s figures show that ‘the greatest increase in state revenue is attributable not to tax farming [nor to the increase of revenue from the cizye] but to the avarız’.11 Among the more long-lasting steps undertaken to balance the books were those of broadening the tax base and of widening the range of impositions. This was not possible on the basis of the traditional çift-hane system of land taxes, which were fixed by quantity as well as by value. Nor, by the end of the sixteenth century, were potential land taxes any longer meticulously recorded on an (almost) empire-wide scale in
— Michael Ursinus —
comprehensive tapu tahrir registers as the basis for allocating prebends such as timars, zeamets and has.12 Instead, recourse was had to the avarız levy. Originating in the fifteenth century, this had initially been an occasional, emergency levy in times of particular demand; by around it had become an annual tax. As a revenue-raising system based on different assessment principles to that of land taxes, and expanded to cut across traditional boundaries of tax exemption and social privilege, the avarız levies were coupled with a systemic disposition to become more and more inclusive and ever more exacting. Avarız registers became more comprehensive after c., reflecting efforts to extend the liability to avarız to all the taxpayers of an area; a detailed avarız register for Harput also lists, apart from the local taxpayers, 13 Comprising exempt members of for the /– classes. a mere per centtaxof ulema and military Ottoman central revenue in –, the avarız levies produced nearly a third of the total by – and remained at per cent in –. In some provinces, avarız collections produced more than half the total revenue. 14 The traditional Ottoman revenue system had been based principally on the surplus derived from agriculture, while urban revenues normally made up only a small part of the total, except in the case of has holdings allocated to regional governors in their provincial cities. The avarız, however, was levied on rural and urban taxpayers alike, and increasingly also on those of formerly exempt status. It therefore was not only capable of drawing upon additional rural resources, but also ‘tapped the new commercial prosperity resulting from sixteenth-century urbanization’.15 To underpin these efforts at increasing revenue, periodic avarız surveys were undertaken, initially in tandem with poll-tax surveys, to produce up-to-date counts of taxpayers liable to avarız. At least from the s, the government aimed at a more realistic approach in assessing the ever-changing tax base, and possibly as a means of keeping track of resettled peasants.16 In the old system symbolized by the tapu tahrir, the principle of the peasant being registered according to his çift had been stubbornly upheld in the interest of the timar -holder, whose income derived mainly from the land taxes, as fixed and recorded in the kanunname and tapu tahrir registers. In contrast, the avarız system linked taxation primarily to the person, rather than to the land. Therefore, if someone did manage to establish themselves away from their srcinally registered domicile, the new system would simply register the taxpayer in their actual (i.e., new) place of residence, either individually (as head of a family household, hane) or, as time went on, in groups of three to fifteen (or even more) adult males per tax unit, confusingly also called hane or, more specifically, avarızhane. For instance, in Balikesir in , ‘three married men and [or?] six bachelors would constitute one hane’; in Cyprus in , five Muslim taxpaying individuals (again a combination of heads of household and single adult avarızhane males) represented onethe ; the specify instructions detailing the avarız of the district of Timurci for year – that three taxpayers were tosurvey be counted as one avarızhane.17 Such examples show that, even though taxpayers were registered individually, they were grouped for assessment and collection purposes, as the system was based on the principle of collective fiscal responsibility. This allowed for a degree of mobility, although this was checked by the resentment of those who saw their tax burden increase due to the absence of a fellow taxpayer. It was also flexible, above all in the actual distribution of the tax load among the collective, as this was determined locally and could be adjusted without risking any loss of revenue.18
— The transformation of the Ottoman fiscal regime —
By around , the appearance in the avarızhane registers of fractional hane proves that the system had developed one stage further towards the adoption of a novel fiscal principle. No longer was the hane considered an aggregate consisting of real people; the same term had instead become a mere accounting device used to express simply the share of the overall avarız liability of each fiscal subject – i.e., from an administrative sub-district down to the town quarter or village. 19 The number of hanes (quotas) in the registers no longer directly reflected the number of hanes (household groups as tax units) on the ground. Increasingly, the exact hane quota to be assigned to a specific number of real households (constituting, say, a village or district) became a matter of bargaining between representatives (such as village elders or urban notables) on the the onetaxpayers hand andorthetheir authorities on the other. Much of this took place in local or regional assemblies under the supervision of the kadı. ‘Taxation by negotiation seems to have become a general characteristic of revenue collection in the second half of the seventeenth century’.20 With this new principle established in the raising of taxes locally and regionally, involving the local kadıs and other provincial and local authorities as well as the representatives of the taxpayers, the distribution of (negotiated) tax totals across the (negotiated) total of fiscal quotas per unit, by means of a process called tevzi (distribution), became by the mid-seventeenth century the standard means of local revenue-raising across the empire.21 Thus by around the ‘classical’ system of tax assessment based on provincewide, centrally administered inventories of taxpayers listed by name and status, complete with a quantitative survey of the productive resources in each locality they inhabited, had given way, on the local and regional level, to procedures based on little more than establishing the overall requirement and then fixing, cascading downwards, the share of each fiscal subject at each level, involving negotiations between the authorities and the taxpayers or their representatives. Whereas tapu tahrir registers had contained a degree of demographic data, which has enabled modern researchers to use them, perhaps over-enthusiastically, in lieu of population censuses,22 avarız registers no longer reflected the demographic situation on the ground, increasingly so over time. Both avarız surveys, on which the hane or ‘tax house system’ was based, and cizye records soon had to rely, particularly for periodic updates, on counts of local taxpayers executed or supervised by the local kadıs.23 The central government found it increasingly difficult to keep track of the exact numbers and whereabouts of taxpayers and gradually abandoned the attempt. When orders were sent out from Istanbul to execute a fresh survey of a certain village, they now sometimes included the instruction to report to the central government not concerning the exact number of taxpayers in the village, but simply about how many ‘tax houses’ (hane quota) the village would be able to support.24 ‘ASSISTANCE’ LEVIES
Although avarız taxation succeeded in producing a substantial increase in state revenue during the seventeenth century, even this had to be augmented by additional levies to combat the monetary and budgetary difficulties created especially by war. At such moments of special need, the central government would borrow from the wealthy large sums called, rather euphemistically, imdadiyye (‘assistance’ levy) or imdad-i seferiyye (‘assistance in time of war’). These sums would be reimbursed later by way
— Michael Ursinus —
of impositions on taxpayers. According to the contemporary historians Raşid and Silahdar, in , following a disastrous Hungarian campaign and the loss of Buda, the Ottoman government decreed that the local elites of all towns and cities on Ottoman soil should contribute to the war effort: kise (purses), each equalling kuruş, the equivalent of gold pieces, were to be raised from the well-to-do of Istanbul alone. Only two years later, in February , an extraordinary imposition totalling , kise was planned, for which a fetva (legal opinion) from the şeyhülislam (chief jurisconsult) had to be commissioned, but as a result of a change in government it was later abandoned. In the government tried to meet the huge costs of the continuing campaigns by drawing on the inner treasury thecase palace and by exactionsHungarian from the wealthy, including the notables of Egypt – inofthis appar25 ently without authorizing later levies from taxpayers by way of reimbursement. The subsequent levying of imdad-i seferiyye from ordinary taxpayers was from the outset closely linked with the need to meet the expenses of the provincial auxiliary troops known as segban or levend, those cavalry and infantry troops hired and equipped by the military governors partly for service in the imperial army, partly as their own household retinues. As governors would tend otherwise to collect extra dues themselves to cover equipping and maintenance expenses or else to allow these troops to live off the land, the official impositions on taxpayers in cash or kind rose accordingly in order to prevent this. In , a council was held in Istanbul to discuss how best to abolish such unlawful practices. It decided that they should be replaced by the imdad-i seferiyye, as a regular lump-sum payment administered under the supervision of the local kadı and an official sent by the central government. Together with members of the local elites such as the ayan (local notables) and the elders of villages or town quarters, these two officials would decide apportionment and oversee collection within a kaza, the smallest judicial and administrative unit for this purpose. İnalcık suggests that the role of the ayan in administration of the imdad-i seferiyye was one of the major factors contributing to their increasing predominance in administration. ‘Not only did practices related to this tax strengthen the position of the notables toward the pashas, but they also provided ample grounds for more effective participation [of local leaders] in provincial administrative matters’.26 In parallel with the imdad-i seferiyye, as a means to support the governors in times of peace when ‘wartime aid’ was unavailable, and to prevent them from dismissing most of their auxiliary regiments, a new ‘peacetime contribution’, imdad-i hazariyye, was authorized at about the same time (). This was to be assessed and collected in the same way as its wartime counterpart, again helping to regularize some of the earlier ‘heavy’ or ‘unlawful’ impositions ( tekalif-i şakka) on taxpayers by local governors and their retinues. The introduction of a ‘peacetime contribution’ for the benefit of provincial governors highlights a more general, problem: that a continuous reduction in the government’s shareifoflong-standing, overall revenue-raising, andofhence its inability to provide adequate financial support for governors and officials. Darling’s calculations suggest that official revenue (including timar revenue) received by the imperial treasury fell from per cent in the s to per cent in the s. However, the value of this appears to have risen by per cent over the earlier figure, which suggests an increase in the empire’s total revenue of per cent, or per cent when corrected for inflation. While ‘the ability to quadruple the revenue yield suggests that the empire as a whole may have been growing richer, not poorer, during this period’, it appears
— The transformation of the Ottoman fiscal regime —
that most of this additional revenue failed to reach the central treasury and either remained in provincial treasuries, where it ‘formed the basis for the growth of provincial power in the eighteenth century’, or was disbursed for local expenditure.27 In line with earlier Ottoman state tradition, provincial governors had long been entitled to levy their own impositions on taxpayers, but only in times of crisis and subject to the sultan’s personal approval, whereas governors of sub-provinces ( sancakbeyi) and their deputies were repeatedly warned, as was underlined in a ferman (imperial decree) dating from the critical year , that they would face the death penalty if they followed their superiors’ example. Generally speaking, the raising of unauthorized taxes from the independently of the central was to considered a serious infringementreaya of the sultan’s authority and an government act detrimental state interests, since doing so often caused taxpayers to abandon their lands and brought about a loss in state revenue. Yet in practice, particularly in times of crisis, the authorities more often than not turned a blind eye. In addition, there were plenty of seemingly legitimate pretexts for exacting levies and collecting fines ‘for the good of’ the populace (termed ‘customary’ impositions, tekalif-i örfiyye), such as for provisions and other expenses incurred by government officials while performing public services. Nor were such impositions limited to the governors. Government agents, tax collectors and even the kadıs and their deputies were (or became) entitled to exact a multitude of individual levies, albeit on a smaller scale.28 LOCAL DISTRIBUTION
Our principal sources for shedding light on the actual functioning – as opposed to the official principles – of Ottoman revenue-raising from the late seventeenth until the early nineteenth century are the registers of locally incurred expenses ( masarıf defterleri), still a much underrated source for the history of Ottoman history close to the grass-roots level.29 They were drawn up by local officials and notables under the supervision of the local kadı and entered into his record book (sicil) in preparation for imposition, after negotiation, on local taxpayers by means of tevzi, ‘distributing’ the tax load among those registered as liable in the accompanying tevzi defteri (‘distribution schedule’ or ‘register of apportioning’). From the early eighteenth century onwards, these ‘local expense registers’,30 of which hundreds have survived from several locations, took on the character of provincial budgets.31 As with the imdadiyye levies, local elites were prominent in the distribution, collection and administration of the ‘local expense’ revenues. The kaza ayanı, the leading notable of the kaza, functioned as the ‘representative’ of the local community and mediator between the taxpayers and the authorities. In some predominantly Christian areas such as the Peloponnesus and Serbia, which during the foreign formative years of the ayanlık in the early eighteenth were temporarily under rule, Christian notables often took the placecentury of the Muslim kaza ayanı in this mediating role in the levying of taxes. One of the few extant eyewitness accounts of the functioning of tevzi in one of these districts brought back under Ottoman rule is by one of the founders of modern Serbia, Prota Matija Nenadović.32 The following lengthy extract, relating to the late eighteenth century, illustrates not only the important ‘representative’ functions of some members of the indigenous elite, but also their role and tactics in the bargaining process with the Ottoman authorities. In addition, it demonstrates to what extent the
— Michael Ursinus —
current approach to tax assignment – in the absence of up-to-date official records of taxpayers – reflected the new assessment principle mentioned above. Finally, it testifies to the continuing central role of the Ottoman kadı in his supervisory capacity, even at a time when the levying of taxes at the grass-roots level had passed into distinctly local hands. Those meetings that I remember were carried out thus: All three knezes [principals], my father Aleksa, Nikola Grbović, and Ilija Birčanin, with a few kmets [yeomen], went to Valjevo and each brought with them to court the accounts of his if, for example, any been pashaspent; or anyorother Turkbuilding had passed through for own whosedistrict; entertainment much had for some material or something else that they had paid that should have been paid for by the whole nahija [district]. A number of old Turkish agas [i.e. Janissaries] presided over the court, looked at the accounts, and when they had agreed that they were in order the kadı confirmed them with his seal. The knezes then took this list of expenses and wrote an order how much should be chargeable to every married man and so, little by little, it was reckoned that every legal household would have to pay about a hundred or sometimes more grosh [kuruş] on Mitrovdan or on Gjurdjevdan [i.e. at six monthly intervals]. But it should be known that in the Valjevo district there were only seven hundred and fifty of these legal households inscribed. So the knezes had told the first vezir after the German war [of –] and this they had ever afterwards held to, so that when they assessed the taxes among the people by married men it came to eight or at the most ten grosh each, since the knezes concealed the numbers from the vezir and the spahis, and the other Turks who knew of this did not want to tell them. The knezes when they went to the vezir in connection with taxes brought with them the best of the local kmets whom they dressed in the very poorest clothes, with their pigtails showing through their caps, and when they appeared before the vezir they cried out: ‘Aman, for the health of the Sultan! We cannot pay such heavy taxes; You see that we are naked and bare-foot and we are the best householders among the poor people. Who can ask a hundred or a hundred and sixty grosh a head from such as we?’ and so forth. Then the vezir would reduce the taxes a little. So did all the knezes from the whole pashaluk. They would bring their kmets and in Belgrade there would sometimes gather up to more than two hundred kmets and knezes, agreed among themselves in the pasha’s saraj [residence]. The knezes went in to the pasha and the poor kmets remained in the courtyard, but this was usually on the following day when the vezir in the evening apportioned the taxes; when it seemed to them that it was too much, they would all go before the saraj and cry out and pray him to listen to them, and pasha wouldwent approve requests and and on reduce a little. Then ourthethree knezes into their districts theirthe waytaxtold everyone to fix a day on which two or three men from every village would come to Valjevo; and there more than three hundred persons would meet and go before the court. The local agas came also. After that the kadi would study the vezir’s order and would say how much the tax was to be. Then the three knezes divided up the tax in this manner; if it came to a hundred thousand, my father accepted fifty thousand, that is one-half, for his district from Valjevo to the Sava, since in his district was the best wheat- and acorn-producing land; the remaining half Grbović and
— The transformation of the Ottoman fiscal regime —
Birčanin divided, but Grbović relieved Birčanin of every tenth grosh and accepted it for his district since there was better land in his than in Birčéanin’s district. And all this was done and settled in the open before the whole gathering, after which every knez summoned two or three men from each village from his district. Then my father called a meeting at Reljino Polje in the Kršna Glava district. . . . When the kmets had gathered at Reljino Polje, each one brought from his village any who were blind or halt or maimed, or a pauper, and showed them all before the knez and the kmets, and the knez asked: ‘Brothers, look at these poor people; shall we, or shall we not, tax them?’ Then the kmets examined them and said: ‘This one we33must, and that one we must not.’ So it was all agreed and the tax apportioned. The increasing role of ‘mediating’ powers in the taxation process can be further illustrated by the emerging class of landowners who not only assumed de facto property rights at the expense of the state but also developed fiscal interests: the çiftlik sahibleri (‘farm owners’). Out of the ruins of the increasingly obsolete timar system, yet partly in co-existence with it, the çiftlik sahibleri came to control, if not legally ‘own’, farm land which had previously been registered as state land, particularly in some coastal areas, river valleys and less mountainous regions of the empire.34 Among the first such districts to have developed a çiftlik economy is the kaza of Manastır (Bitola) in the central-western part of the Ottoman Balkans. Here, the vast majority of the local timar -holders appear to have lived in town as early as . With ‘their interest in their villages slipping since they frequently leased out their right to collect their incomes to other individuals’,35 local çiftlik owners had already begun to leave their mark in the Manastır court records. In a certain Mehmed Ağa requested registration in the sicil of the fact that he employed as many as ırgat (farm labourers) each year at a wage of akçe per head per day, presumably on his own çiftliks in the area.36 By , at the very latest, almost a third of the adult male population in the district must already have been living on private farms (some of them quite large, with as many as twenty or in one case eighty-five labourers, but most of them small with only two to three nefer or adult males), rather than in ‘free’ villages known as hanekeş, which alone continued ‘enduring [full] taxation on the basis of hane’.37 In other words, taxpayers living on private farms were increasingly shielded from the tax collector by their master in order to maximize their financial benefits; only those living in the hanekeş villages contributed fully to the tevzi levies, constituting a much-reduced tax base. The prominence of çiftlik sahibleri in local affairs, such as the collecting of revenue or as tax farmers, continued well into the s. 38 While on their çiftlik holdings their word must have carried law, their bargaining power (executed individually or collectively)vis-à-vis not only towards the ‘free’ or fully from taxable but equally state authorities, is evident thehanekeş start. Invillage fact, communities, their powers were such that they produced for the imperial treasury what has been called the ‘tax base crisis of the s’.39 Due to a multitude of economic and fiscal pressures, and also in consequence of the disruptions brought about by war, lawlessness and banditry, more and more village taxpayers abandoned their plots, mostly to work as ırgat on the private lands of the çiftlik owners. They became, in effect, tax refugees ( gürihte) ‘hiding’ from the treasury on the lands of the locally powerful. At some point during the s, çiftlik proprietors in the district of Manastır succeeded in having their entire
— Michael Ursinus —
çiftlik holdings taken out of the local tevzi process, thereby turning their possessions into de facto tax-exempt holdings, in tevzi terms, if only temporarily. In addition, acting as a kind of tax farmer (deruhdeci), the çiftlik sahibleri of Manastır succeeded in
tightening their grip also over the remaining peasant holdings. By they already controlled almost per cent of all hanekeş (as opposed to çiftlik) households of the district (including the town of Bitola), with nearly per cent in the hands of the five most prominent deruhdecis. Around forty years later, in –, they collectively controlled per cent, with the five biggest deruhdecis retaining or ‘mediating (deruhde eylemek)’40 more than per cent of all ‘free’ taxable households. This figure rose further, in anwhen overallthe(fiscal) control over the so-called free villages of among almost per resulting cent by , five most powerful s (who were also deruhdeci the most wealthy çiftlik owners of the locality) shared among them a total of little less than per cent.41 Thus, after having taken possession of a large share of the former peasant holdings in the course of the s and s, the çiftlik proprietors of Manastır, throughout the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, were ‘mediating’ between the authorities and almost per cent of the remaining local peasantry. The assumption of deruhdeci powers, in addition to the exploitation of çiftlik holdings, constituted another, perhaps no less lucrative, form of private control over the primarily agrarian resources of the country from which the çiftlik-owning classes of Manastır must have derived much of their income and power. Even the office of Rumili kaymakamı (deputy governor of Rumeli), the second in command after the governor-general, was by the early nineteenth century regularly awarded to prominent members of this local ‘landed gentry’, among them Zaimzade Rüstem Bey (kaymakam in and again in ). At the time of his second appointment, Rüstem Bey was ‘mediating’ more than of Manastır’s c ., taxable households, the largest individual share controlled by a local deruhdeci. Of these, only thirty çift represented his personal çiftlik holdings.42 Since his first appointment as kaymakam, Rüstem Bey had eclipsed his fellow deruhdecis by entering into more and more apparently mutually advantageous contracts with village communities, one of which is quoted in full below. Trpče Krste, Lazar Ferka, Stanoja Stanko, Gekula Šiniko [plus additional Christian heads of households] as well as the remaining inhabitants of Belacrkva village in the district of the town Manastır came to the meeting of the kadı’s court, when one of them, in the name of all others, and as their representative, made the following statement: ‘We [herewith] dismiss our former deruhdeci Seyyid Abdülkerim Bey and appoint [in his stead as] our [future] deruhdeci Seyyid Rüstem Bey, with whom we enter into an agreement ( akd), on condition that it can besorevoked, according to which we empower advance taxes year, that we can apportion and discharge them him at thetoend of eachour year, andevery that we pay him a remuneration of one thousand piasters [per annum for his services]’. Their statement was copied down in this place. On Şevval in the year [] [ June ].43 Quite clearly, the çiftlik cum deruhdeci-based local elite had made itself indispensable in the day-to-day running of one of the most important centres of provincial government in the Ottoman empire, as regards the levying of taxes, the provisioning of troops
— The transformation of the Ottoman fiscal regime —
and the recruitment of auxiliaries. The kadı, appointed to the locality for rarely more than a year as the representative of central government and as such also to preside over the local administrative councils (meclis-i memleket) in which the landed ‘gentry’ had both a seat and a voice, was well advised to make use of their local knowledge. Crucially for their control of the district’s fiscal resources, the landowners must have kept a record of those households possessed by each of them or which they were ‘mediating’ at any given moment. Given that adequate registers were no longer forthcoming from Istanbul, inventories (yoklama defterleri) of the local taxpayers in the çiftliks and (in less detail) the hanekeş villages (perhaps reflecting not so much the actual state of the eluabout it as established between the landowners themsive basethebut the) were consensus selvestaxand collated by Manastır’s çiftlik cum deruhdeci local gentry.44 kadı Surveys (tahrirs) of the taxable households (or their equivalent, the number of yokes or teams of oxen) were executed locally from time to time within the confines of the district to adjust the tevzi quotas; during the early nineteenth century this occurred in Manastır every seven years, in , , and .45 As the taxpayers’ ability to pay was a growing concern on account of the ever-increasing volume of provincial budgets (as documented in the masarıf defterleri), further steps were undertaken locally to requantify, reunify and re-evaluate the local tax base. In Manastır, from , all settlements, Christian and Muslim alike, whether ‘free’ villages or çiftliks (including the hitherto separately taxed Christian and Jewish inhabitants of Bitola), were assigned one of three different rates for tevzi purposes, at the ratio of to to . according to soil quality and other productive factors. In neighbouring Salonica, from , rural settlements were taxed in three rates at a ratio of to to .46 The ability to pay of the collective as a whole was thus taken into account, while that of each taxpayer was left to be decided by the village elders or community leaders as before. REASSERTION OF CENTRAL CONTROL
Parallel attempts by the government in Istanbul to establish an empire-wide system of assessments based on similar principles were slow to mature. The comprehensive, yet by no means empire-wide, population census of – failed to provide the necessary basis for the government’s plan to reorganize the levying of all non-tithe taxes (probably excluding the cizye) by converting them into an annual lump sum of piastres to be exacted from each (male) individual recorded in the population census.47 Nor would it have allowed for an assessment based on individual wealth and income, which was to be the focus of a new census commissioned by imperial ferman on August . With the sub-provinces of Hüdavendigar (Bursa) in Anatolia and Gelibolu (Gallipoli) in Rumeli considered pilot areas, a comprehensive survey of the property all subjects, irrespective of rank, The statusintention and religion, be carriedand outincome togetherof with their annual tax payments. was towas fixtoa tax quota (hisse-i tekalif) for each individual taxpayer, thereby bringing back under direct government control what had been the prerogative of local powers for generations. But it took time to execute the plan even in the pilot districts, and by the time of the announcement of the tanzimat decree at Gülhane on November the establishment of a sound basis for an equitable system of tax assessment still ranked highly among the reform promises. Tangible improvement was slow to come. The new unified vergü tax was largely an amalgam of earlier impositions levied per tevzi;
— Michael Ursinus —
intensified attempts at establishing a centralized fiscal regime in the provinces through a new type of fiscal agent (muhassıl) soon showed the limits of centralized reform ‘top down’, if only because they proved extremely expensive. Carrying out surveys of personal wealth and income on the continuous basis required to keep the complex system up to date proved equally demanding. It was only after the establishment, in , of a separate cadastre agency (tahrir-i emlak nezareti) in the Ministry of Finance that surveys of cultivated land as well as urban land plots and buildings could eventually be comprehensively co-ordinated with assessments of agricultural production and profits from trade, commerce and industry.48 Seen from Istanbul, the Ottoman taxpayer, for two centuries a largely anonymous member ofasaa fiscal collective under local control, had finally in his majority been reconstituted centrally assessed individual subject to state supervision. NOTES
Goldstone . Darling : . Ibid.: ; Sahillioğlu : –; Pamuk . Darling : –. Darling : ff. Sahillioğlu : ; Darling : . Darling : ; on malikane mukataa, see also the essay by Ariel Salzmann, chapter in this volume. Darling : and ch. . Ibid.: –. Ibid.: ; Barkan (n.d.): . Darling : . Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ibid.: , n. . Ibid.: –. Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ibid.: . See the classic study on the demographic value of tahrir defteri by Gyula Káldy-Nagy (). McGowan : –; Darling : , –. Darling : . İnalcık a: –. Ibid.: . Darling : . İnalcık a: . Among other details, they offer information on claimants of expenses who are rarely mentioned elsewhere, such as local vampire hunters; see Ursinus . Radušev : . Sućeska : . Edwards . Ibid.: –; McGowan : . McGowan : , , map .
— The transformation of the Ottoman fiscal regime —
Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ibid.: . Ursinus : –. McGowan : . Ibid.: . Ursinus : . Džambazovski : . Ibid.: . Local surveys producing similar (if not greater) detail are known to have taken place elsewhere
(Ursinus between a), andbut , Manastır including seemstwo unique, dozenwith lists aforcontinuous the eighteenth sequence century of yoklama alone. defterleri Ursinus : –; a: –. Ursinus a: . Ahmed Lutfi : II, ; Ursinus : . Ursinus : –; b: –.
CHAPTER TWENTYNINE
PROV INCIAL PO WERHO LDERS AND THE EMPIRE IN THE LATE OTTOMAN WORLD * Conflict or partnership?
Ali Yaycıoğlu
I
n the summer of , during the worst days of the Ottoman–Russian war, the need for ready cash to provision the imperial army on the Danubian frontier was crucial for the Ottoman authorities. Owing to a persistent budget deficit, the money left in the treasury was far from sufficient to meet the escalating expenses of the battlefield. The Imperial Council recommended that Mahmud II (–) borrow the necessary amount from four of the great provincial power-holders of the empire. In his report, the acting grand vezir wrote to the sultan: Tepedelenli Ali Paşa, the governor of Egypt [Mehmed] Ali Paşa, the Cabbarzades and the Karaosmanzades are holders of wealth and affluence. Each of them has the capacity to send a couple of thousandkises of akças. In fact, they owe their wealth to the Exalted State. For that reason, in such a [troubled] time, it is obvious that it is a duty incumbent upon them to help [the Exalted State].However, if their assistance were to be asked through ordinary sultanic orders, because of their temperament, they would put forward several excuses in order to escape from sending it. For that reason, it would be [more prudent] if your Majesty were to write special letters to each of them without informingthe servants of the state about these letters.In these letters, if Your Majesty were to express his judicious imperial opinion, and to ask in his own imperial hand if they would ‘send that amount ofakçes to my imperial abode, to be spent in the campaign of the army which is to expel the enemy of our faith that is attacking the empire from various sides’; if these letters were to be enclosed together with imperial decrees and to be conveyed to each of them by palace if the money to beobedience requestedtointhe similar fashion, it would be verystewards, likely thatand they would showwere urgent sultanic orders, and to deliver the necessary amounts. Sending that kind of imperial letter to the servants of the sultanate will not damage the glory [of the sultanate]. In the past, there were occasions on which such aid was requested. We cannot think of any other alternative in order to obtain money from outside sources.1 These provincial magnates were not ordinary office-holders and were not to be considered in the same way as members of the traditional imperial elite. The Council advised
— Provincial power-hol
ders and the empire —
Mahmud II to send personal letters to them, without informing the ‘servants of the state’, namely the dignitaries of the empire, the chiefs of the Janissaries, the military commanders, and the governors connected to the imperial establishment. Unlike the ‘servants of the state’, none of these magnates had been trained in the imperial palace and college or bureaucratic circles of Istanbul or in the household of an imperial grandee. They had no organic connection with Istanbul. Although by the late eighteenth century they controlled a considerable number of provincial units, none had achieved their wealth and status by climbing the military or administrative hierarchies of the empire. If they did not perhaps belong to imperial elite, who were Aparttheir from their enormous wealth, thethe feature which describes themthey? best was provincial identity. Although they controlled their units through several different arrangements, they were all deeply rooted in their respective regions.2 Their sources of power were embedded in the socio-political realities of these regions rather than in the bureaucratic and military circles of Istanbul. Their loyalty to the imperial city and its political factions was therefore conditional. While forming alliances with different factions in the centre, they could also turn down the orders of the Porte; while rendering their services, they expected favours, profits and gains in return. Although they operated within the institutional structure of the Ottoman empire, through imperial authorizations and the titles granted to them, they were not central appointees. Imperial authorization was no more than recognition of the political, military and economic power which they had acquired in their respective regions as autonomous actors. In the view of the Imperial Council these provincial power-holders would not take ordinary imperial edicts seriously. Only upon the personal request of the sultan, written in his own hand, would they loan the necessary amounts. When Mahmud II hesitated, fearing to give the impression that the Ottoman sultan considered them his equals, the Council reminded him of other recent occasions in which sultans had asked for such aid from provincial magnates. These included the previous year, , in which Mahmud himself had signed a contract, the Deed of Alliance (Sened-i İttifak), with some of these regional leaders, including the Cabbaroğlus and Karaosmanoğlus, whereby they had agreed to deliver military and financial aid to the sultanate and the state if requested.3 PROVINCIAL POWERHOLDERS IN OTTOMAN WORLD
THE
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such power-holding individuals 4
and familiesfamily were well established in many Ottoman provinces. In northern the Buşatlı centred their power in Scutari and on the Adriatic coasts of Albania, the Gulf of Drin. Although Buşatlı Mahmud Paşa was declared a rebel several times owing to his refusal to render the services demanded, the family upheld their local influence thanks to their role in Adriatic trade. 5 In southern Albania, Ali Paşa of Ioannina and his sons had not only made their city a major administrative centre in the Adriatic world, but had expanded their influence throughout Albania, the Peloponnese and Thessaly. Depicted by Lord Byron as ‘the Muslim Bonaparte’, Ali Paşa became
— Ali Yaycıoğlu —
an international actor during the Napoleonic era. 6 In central Macedonia, İsmail Bey of Serres was the major figure. Based in an important city on the route connecting Thessaloniki, where he also had influence, and the central Balkans, his dominion spread over several districts in Macedonia.7 The leading figure in Danubian Bulgaria was Osman Pazvantoğlu of Vidin. Starting his career as a local janissary chief in this garrison town, Pazvantoğlu initiated three major uprisings against the Ottoman state in the late eighteenth century. In , the Porte recognized his power in Vidin and appointed him governing commander of this frontier district. His case is a typical example of the way in which, if the Ottoman unable subduehim (te’dib ) a the dissenter, it gratified him ( taltif ) by granting titlesstate and was offices and to accepted into imperial establishment. Following Pazvantoğlu’s death in , his treasurer Molla İdris married his widow, seized his treasury, received an oath of loyalty from Osman’s comrades and was appointed governor of Vidin with the title İdris Paşa.8 Further east, İsmail Ağa of Ruse (Rusçuk) consolidated his power in another Danubian city. Elected by the people of Ruse as ayan (here, ‘district overseer’), he then had his own followers appointed or elected in different neighbouring districts towards the south and the Black Sea. After İsmail Ağa’s assassination in , the people of Ruse invited one of these followers, Alemdar Mustafa Ağa, the overseer of Razgrad, to oversee their district. Alemdar (also known as Bayraktar) had an extraordinary career. In , thanks to his control over local military resources along the Danube, he was persuaded to become commander of the provincial army against Russia following a major Ottoman defeat; military success against Russia contributed to his nomination as governor of Ruse. Shortly afterwards, in , he led a political coup in alliance with a reformist faction in Istanbul and became grand vezir. This unusual episode, where a provincial notable became a grand vezir following a coup, ended when he was killed during a janissary uprising against his regime.9 In the Asian part of the empire, the Karaosmanoğlus of Manisa dominated Aegean Anatolia. Between and , under the leadership of Hacı Hüseyin Ağa, the family controlled several small and large estates in western Anatolia, the cities of Aydın, Manisa and Bergama, and extended their influence to Izmir.10 To the east, across the Kızılırmak (Halys) river were the Çapanoğulus (Cabbaroğlus) of Bozok, whose family headquarters were at Yozgat, a town founded by this clan in the early eighteenth century. Under Süleyman Bey (leader –), the family expanded throughout central Anatolia from north to south, from Amasya to Aleppo, holding different districts and provincial units with varying status and arrangements. A branch of the family settled in Istanbul, where one of Süleyman’s sons, Abdülfettah, entered a judicial career and later became kazasker of Anatolia, one of the chief judges of the 11
empire. family, Towards north, in the central Black the Paşa, domain of the Canikli whothehad become significant due toSeatheregion, careerwas of Ali a leading Ottoman general during the Ottoman–Russian war of to ; based in Canik, the family later established control over Trabzon. After Canikli Ali Paşa’s death in , his son Battal and grandson Tayyar had an uneasy relationship with the Porte and fled to Russia. Although they were later pardoned, their relations with Selim III (–) remained difficult. In the early nineteenth century, the Çapanoğlus and the Caniklis were in conflict over the prestigious district of Amasya. When Selim III backed the Çapanoğlus, Tayyar Paşa became the champion of the anti-Selim
— Provincial power-hol
ders and the empire —
movement in Anatolia. Having moved to Istanbul after the fall of Selim in , he was appointed deputy grand vezir in the janissary-backed government of Mustafa IV (–) but was executed one year later, during Alemdar Mustafa’s successful coup.12 Further south, in Bilad al-Sham (Syria), prominent figures also held sway. From the early eighteenth century Damascus had been dominated by the ‘Azm family. Their most important asset was control over the pilgrimage caravan, thanks to the crucial location of Damascus as the official gathering point for the north–south route to the holy cities. During the eighteenth century, the ‘Azm governor of Damascus carried hac13) On the of thetopilgrimage’ ( mir-i andthe wascoast, givenAhmed considerable cial title and ‘commander military privileges supervise this duty. CezzarfinanPaşa (d. ), governor of Sayda (Saida) and Akka, was a Bosnian adventurer. Having served in various households, including that of the Mamluk notable Ali Bey el-Kebir in Egypt, he established his own household and a retinue of well-armed men, fighting against Zahir al-‘Umar, another provincial magnate.14 In , the Porte appointed Cezzar Paşa governor of Sayda, although he established his base in the growing port city of Akka and was actively involved in maritime trade. His reputation reached its peak when he withstood the French siege of Akka in . As a reward, he was allowed to expand his control over Bilad al-Sham and briefly captured the governorship of Damascus from the ‘Azm family.15 Mehmed Ali Paşa of Egypt, another Balkan warrior whose fortune was made elsewhere, is perhaps the best known of all these provincial power-holders. An Albanian from Kavala, his srcins were comparable to those of Cezzar Paşa and Ali Paşa of Ioannina. His military career began in the Albanian contingent sent to Egypt with the Ottoman army to fight the French in . His rapid rise to become governor of Egypt should be understood in the general context of the political instability caused by the end of the Mamluk regime, brief French rule, British involvement, and the reconquest of Egypt by the Ottoman army. By Mehmed Ali was well on his way to establishing independent authority in Egypt. 16 This sketch represents by no means a complete picture of the provincial magnates of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Many other individuals and families established local or regional authority in different corners of the empire during this period.17 Those listed above were perhaps the most well known, but they were not necessarily the most powerful or the wealthiest. A comprehensive, comparative picture of the wealth and power of these notable families and individuals is yet to be drawn. It would demonstrate that there were many different types and categories of elites in the Ottoman provinces, which makes it very difficult and possibly unhelpful to attempt to subsume them all under the same category. The main focus of this essay
is therefore onasthose Muslim provincial power-holders who participated in governing mechanisms office-holders or contractors of the empire. Muslim or non-Muslim local notables who were natural leaders of their communities, merchant families, religious elites and tribal or oligarchic leaders cannot be considered here. However, it is not always possible to draw clear lines between different elite categories, and some features of the provincial power-holders discussed below might also be applicable to other elite groups.
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FAMILY, DYNASTY, LOCALITY AND COMMUNITY
Despite profound differences in regional contexts and in socio-political backgrounds, these provincial power-holders had certain features in common. The family was at the centre of their enterprise. Some, such as the Çapanoğlus (Cabbaroğlus) of Yozgat, the Karaosmanoğlus of Manisa, the Buşatlıs of Shkodër, the ‘Azms of Damascus, and the Caniklis of Samsun and Trabzon, had consolidated their position under charismatic founders at different periods during the eighteenth century. Other power-holders around were self-made men, such as Ali Paşa of Ioannina, Tirsinikli İsmail Ağa of Ruse, Osman Pazvantoğlu of Vidin, İsmail Bey of Serres, Mehmed Ali Paşa of Egypt and Cezzar Ahmet Paşa of Akka. Only after their rise to power did some of these make their families part of their enterprise by transferring or delegating authority to their sons or other relatives. The centrality of family in provincial power-building was reflected in the use of clan names ending in oğlu or zade (both meaning ‘son of’) and indicating the founding father of the family, such as Karaosmanoğlu, the son(s) of Kara Osman. The term ‘family’ can refer to a large agnatic clan, including several conjugal families, attached to each other through bonds of kinship and organized around a leading charismatic figure. This was usually but not necessarily one of the family elders, as in the two large clans the Çapanoğlus and the Karaosmanoğlus, who were organized under Süleyman Bey and Haci Hüseyin Ağa, respectively. However, a family unit could also be a conjugal entity rather than a large clan, with one major father figure, several wives and sons and daughters, such as the families of Ali Paşa of Ioannina or Mehmed Ali Paşa of Egypt. In both cases, however, the elite family, either a clan or akapı conjugal unit, was surrounded by a larger community, generally of termed halkı (‘community of the gate’), whichhousehold included dozens, even hundred servants; household officers such as a treasurer, secretaries and stewards; and armed units, sometimes a small-scale army, under the command of various captains. Added to this were the supporters, clients or allied groups of the central household from lesser families in the locality or broader regional setting.18 The leading members of these families were office-holders (governors, deputy governors, district overseers) and/or contractors (tax farmers) pertaining to provincial and revenue units in their regions. These offices and contracts, granted under various names, were distributed among the male members of the family, with the intention of transmitting wealth and status to the next generation. With some exceptions, such as Kurdish and Circassian beys and Bosnian capitans,19 the Ottoman system provided no guarantee for hereditary claims to wealth and status. On the contrary, the state had always retained the right to confiscate the property enjoyed by its office- and titleholders. Confiscations could be carried out either arbitrarily or following the termination of tenure or the death of the office-holder.20 In response, power-holding families constantly renegotiated their claims to wealth, status or office with the empire. They developed different strategies and instruments to avoid confiscations, such as transforming wealth into charitable foundations (evkaf) governed by family members as trustees, or keeping a good part of it in cash and hiding it from the monitoring of the central authority. A particular feature in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century provincial context is that families bargained with the central authority by offering service or money
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to ‘buy’ the inheritance of a deceased office-holder and thereby keep wealth and status within the family. Selling the inheritance of an office-holder to his heirs was often beneficial for the central government, since confiscation processes could be very intricate and costly and could even result in armed conflict between the confiscator and family members. Due to this practice, notable families were able to consolidate their wealth and status over long periods.21 In addition to family ties, all of the regional power-holders at the centre of our analysis had close associations with a locality, town, district or region. This, too, is reflected in their designations, with the second most popular appellation, following the being name ofortheir town (Tepedelen), or region of srcin or where built theirdynastic power:name, Ali Paşa of the Ioannina Tepeleni İsmail Aga ofthey Tirsinik, İsmail Bey of Serres. Sometimes local appellations were used as clan names, such as the Caniklis (from Canik/northern Anatolia) or the Buşatlıs (from Buşat/Albania). Provincial power-holders had deep social, economic and cultural ties with their respective localities, through family relations, political alliances or established business partnerships with other notable families, networks and individuals. However, they were not leaders of a distinctive community or collectivity, as were the Alevi dedes, the Greek kocabaşıs, the Bulgarian and Armenian çorbacıs or the Serbian knezes; rather, they established themselves over districts or provinces in which there might be several different communities. They developed patron–client relationships with local merchants, sufi networks or local Christian or Jewish religious notables, and with other local communities.22 While they built their palaces, mosques, even family cemeteries in these strongholds and the surrounding areas, they also commissioned public buildings, works and sufi lodges to promote their local popularity and legitimacy.23 İsmail Ağa’s massive construction scheme to improve the water supply in Ruse was one example of such public projects initiated or commissioned by power-holders.24
Figure .
The grandsons of Ali Paşa of Ioannina (), by L. Dupré (d. ). The Gennadius Library, Athens.
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These strong local connections were reflected in the collective memory, expressed in popular stories, songs, sayings and elegies. Early nineteenth-century folk songs about the competition between two leading families, such as that between the Çapanoğlus and the Kozanoğlus25 or Greek and Albanian ballads about the heroism of Ali Paşa of Ioannina, are just two examples of such local popular literature.26 Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there was a growing tendency for the centre to allow families to transform themselves into dynasties (hanedan) – that is, political clans controlling certain regions for generations through administrative, economic and social mechanisms. Dynasticization of the provincial elites, especially those inofthe provinces, challenged traditionalofimperial constitution thecentral empireand andstrategic its long-established practice ofthe confiscation officeholders’ wealth. By monopolizing regional wealth and status over several generations, many families were gradually transformed into local power-holders effectively sharing sovereignty with the Ottomans. This process was further reinforced when some of these power-holders established relatively large military strength, such as Ali of Ioannina or Pazvantoğlu of Vidin, either through the contribution of their subordinate allies and bandit leaders or through direct recruitment from their respective regions.27 Such military capacity, especially in unstable and frontier regions, effectively transformed these power-holders into warlords, who consolidated their autonomy through control over organized violence in their regions. INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATION: GOVERNORS, CONTRACTORS AND DISTRICT OVERSEERS
The institutional mechanisms through which provincial power-holders operated varied. In some regions, they became governors in their own right; in others they acted as deputy governors, who were de facto authorities of their units under absentee governors. In other regions, provincial magnates monopolized tax-farming contracts with administrative and long-term privileges, either as direct contractors of the state or as subcontractors of absentee financiers. In yet other regions, they acted as district overseers, elected or approved by local communities to supervise fiscal and administrative affairs of the districts (kaza). In the traditional Ottoman administrative order, there was a limited number of governorships in each province or sub-province, and governors had jurisdiction over the revenue sources assigned to them as salary. In return, they administered these units and commanded the contingents of ‘their’ timar/fief-holders in the imperial army. Socio-politically, most of these governors were trained in the sultan’s palace or the households of other imperial grandees and were connected to the imperial elites rather than to the provincial units they administered. By the Centrally eighteenthappointed century this ‘classical’ arrangement had undergone major development. governors came to be detached from the units assigned to them, especially as long wars and regional appraisals in both west and east required them to move constantly from one corner of the empire to another, from one battle to the next, with their large households and army units. In addition, there was no longer any significant timariot army to command in the provinces, as this group had lost its significance on the battlefield and increasing numbers of timars were being transformed into tax-farming units.28
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As imperial governors became marginalized in provincial affairs, they started to appoint deputies (mütesellim) from established local families to deliver revenues to them and to administer the units in their absence. Mostly, they sold these deputy positions on short-term contracts. As a result, provincial families were able to capture these deputy positions and enter the administrative ranks of the empire. Even if the nominal governors constantly changed, the deputy governors, such as the Karaosmanoğlus of Manisa, gradually became long-term, well-established administrators of these units as de facto administrative authorities.29 In some provinces, the transition was quite dramatic. Men such as Ali Paşa of Ioannina, of Vidin, Mehmed Paşa of Egypt, and Cezzar Paşa Akka Osman capturedPazvantoğlu governorships directly withoutAlioccupying the intermediate post of of deputy, and persuaded the central government to ratify their positions. Occasionally, they set up alliances with contacts in the central administration, paid bribes or negotiated a fee (caize), which they would pay for the appointment. Out of this localization of governorships, a new type of governor emerged, representing longer-term, local and often partisan interests, and challenging the old principle that imperial governors represented the empire as impartial authorities in their dealings with local civil society, its disputes and leaderships. The transformation of the nature of local governance was not limited to the consolidation of deputy governors and localization of governorships. A more significant development was the expansion of tax-farming mechanisms. Constant fiscal pressures throughout the eighteenth century pushed the central government to alter the status of hundreds of revenue units formerly under the jurisdiction of governors or timarholders by transferring them to the central treasury to be farmed out to private or semi-private contractors. In return for their down payment ( muaccele) and later annual rent (mal), contractors were given rights to revenue collection and the obligation to maintain law and order in these regions. Above all, the life-term contracts known as malikane mukataa provided lease-holders with life-time jurisdiction and considerable administrative autonomy, immune from the interference of other office-holders except the judiciary. Further, although these leases were not hereditary, the heirs of lease-holders were often allowed priority in the reassignment of units.30 The expansion of tax-farming arrangements had a profound impact on provincial governance. First, malikane contracts enabled many power-holding individuals and families to reinforce their control over local units through long-term, virtually autonomous rule, particularly where they were able to keep the lease in the family after the srcinal contractor died. Second, local power-holders were also able to act as subcontractors and managers of those tax-farming units not under their direct jurisdiction, including larger revenue sources rented by non-local financiers and units underadministration. the control of the treasury, were imperial or other departments of theascentral fiscal Contractors also evkaf required for irregular tasks such shortterm tax collection, organizing provisioning, or buying crops for the state monopoly. Such fiscal opportunities allowed provincial actors without their own malikane units to take advantage of their local knowledge and networks to develop a specialization in financial matters additional to revenue collection, such as credit extension and money transfer. The third institutional development through which provincial power-holders participated in governance was the formalization of community leaderships or ayan
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status. Before the mid-eighteenth century, the term ayan was used informally to refer to the natural leaders of mostly urban communities, a meaning which it always retained in the Arab provinces of the empire. From the seventeenth century onwards, local communities started to participate in fiscal administration of their respective district through their natural leaders (ayan).31 From the mid-eighteenth century, however, in many parts of the Balkans and Anatolia, this natural leadership was transformed into a formal office, with ayan becoming the title of an office-holder elected by the district community to supervise public and fiscal matters. Ayan ‘elections’ comprised the declaration to the judicial court by community representatives of their collective decision about they authority had elected, nominated approved. was no procedure imposed bywhom the central about how thisordecision wasThere to be reached. The only condition was unanimity within the district community. If different parties supported competing candidates, the community was asked to agree on one of them collectively; otherwise, a third party could be appointed from outside by the centre. An ayan’s principal task was to supervise public affairs. Increasingly during the eighteenth century, the central authority and governors required communities to pay taxes in lump sums. This was partly because detailed information on tax-paying households was becoming outdated, but also, and perhaps more importantly, because neither central government nor the imperial governors had adequate manpower and resources to carry out household-based tax collection. Ayans therefore supervised district-level collection of taxes and public expenditures by allocating the burden among taxpayers in accordance with the taxability of the district and with the consent of the community, and then delivering the taxes collected to the authorities or spending it for other public needs. In return for his service, the ayan collected a commission from the community. Ayans also dealt with other public matters, such as ensuring local security, recruiting local troops for the imperial army, and supervising local provisioning.32 These mechanisms – becoming a governor or deputy governor, contractor or ayan – had differing administrative logic. Governorship and deputy governorship were acquired through appointment – that is, a bureaucratic process. Contractor status was acquired through auctions or sale and was therefore a ‘business’ deal involving a contract between the state and the tax farmer. Ayan status was acquired through collective election or consent-giving and was a ‘political’ process in which authority came from below. These paths at times overlapped. Some ayans later became governors; some malikane-holders were at the same time ayans of other districts; some governors might hold malikane contracts, etc. In all these deals, provincial power-holders needed strong connections in Istanbul, from where the formal authority came. Some had formal representatives, known as kapı kethüdası, appointed by the centre with their approval to follow their business in Ottoman bureaucratic circles.33 Webetween should economy not approach this period with modern assumptionsInbased on a division and politics or business and governance. the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, governance was business. Provincial power-holders acted as fiscal, military and administrative entrepreneurs by using their prestige, local knowledge and connections, managerial capacities and capital for profit and power. The term ‘portfolio capitalist’, suggested by Sanjay Subrahmanyam and C. A. Bayly for power-holders in Mughal India who similarly combined business, administrative and military functions for profit, would not be inappropriate for Ottoman provincial power-holders.34 In this system, where administration and entrepreneurial activities
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were amalgamated, there was no clear distinction, most of the time, between the revenues collected for public (administrative) needs and those for private (personal and family) disbursement. In entrepreneurial activities, a strong financial base or capital was needed.35 Usually, this was provided by moneylenders and bankers (sarrafs), mostly non-Muslim and particularly Armenian.36 These sarrafs played a very active role, not only by providing cash, but also by establishing connections with different financiers, contractors and members of the imperial elite who had a large number of holdings at their disposal. Some sarrafs even helped establish interstate connections, such as Manuk Bey, the renowned Armenian bankerManuk of Alemdar Ağa. Through connections in the imperial circles of Istanbul, had Mustafa an important role whenhis Alemdar was offered the governorship of Silistre and the post of commander of the Danubian army. Later, he was influential in setting up negotiations between Alemdar and Russian authorities for a ceasefire and a possible Ottoman–Russian coalition against France. Manuk Bey, srcinally from Wallachia, was appointed as dragoman when Alemdar Mustafa became grand vezir in , and was briefly one of the most influential men in the empire.37 PROVINCIAL POWERHOLDERS: CHALLENGERS, SERVANTS OR PARTNERS OF THE EMPIRE?
Until recently, historians of the Ottoman empire assumed that there was an inherent conflict between the centre and provincial power-holders, a tension between centralizationcentralization and decentralization. For the those whose shaped by modernist theories, represented state, theanalyses rule of were law, bureaucracy, reform, progress and modernity. Decentralization, on the other hand, stood for disintegration, decline, anarchy, resistance to reform, reaction and backwardness. According to this approach, the early nineteenth-century Ottoman empire was about to disintegrate as a result not only of Russian and French invasions, but also of challenges posed by unruly and backward (feudal) provincial power-holders. However, thanks to Mahmud II’s iron hand and the later tanzimat reforms, the Ottoman imperial state overcame the challenge by defeating the provincial magnates (except Mehmed Ali Paşa) and lived another century.38 Balkan and Arab nationalist historiographies more or less endorse this centralization–decentralization framework. As part of their national narratives, many Albanian historians glorify Ali Paşa of Ioannina as an Albanian hero who rebelled against the Porte and founded a proto-Albanian state. Greek nationalist historians laud the achievements of Ali Paşa or of İsmail Beg of Serres to create autonomous regional rule.39 Bulgarian historians have sympathized with Osman Pazvantoğlu Vidin as challenger to the Porte, and Egyptian historians regard Mehmed Ali Paşa asofthe founder of modern 40 Egypt. In their apparent challenges to the Porte, nationalist narratives suggest, these figures served the later development of a ‘national revival’. In both Ottomanist and nationalist approaches, the central authority and the provincial power-holders usually appear in constant conflict because they represented two irreconcilable interests, centralization and decentralization. This dichotomous and conflictive approach has several problems. First, it is misleading to think of centre
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and provincial elites as two monolithic blocks. There were always different factions in the centre seeking alliances with provincial actors. Likewise, competing families and powerful individuals in the regions sought partners among the ruling elite. When in İsmail Ağa of Ruse was orchestrating resistance against the New Order of Selim III in Edirne, he allied with an anti-New Order faction in Istanbul.41 After the coup of the Janissaries and anti-Selim factions in , the ruling group and the new sultan, Mustafa IV, invited Tayyar Paşa of Canik to be deputy grand vezir. By incorporating Tayyar Paşa into the central administration, the new government intended to establish a coalition with provincial leaders who opposed Selim’s reforms and perhaps elimi42
nate the pro-Selim such as the Çapanoğlus. whenthe Alemdar Mustafa and severalpower-holders, other provincial power-holders initiatedLikewise, a plot against ruling government in Istanbul in , he acted in alliance with the masterminds of the New Order in the central administration.43 Such examples demonstrate that there were alliances (ittifak) among different groups in the centre and provinces, which altered the axis of Ottoman politics from centre–province to, for example, pre-reform or antireform coalitions. Secondly, the majority of fiscal, administrative and military services were negotiated horizontally rather than ordered vertically by the state. In other words, the central authority, instead of ordering its appointed agents to perform services, delegated these services to provincial power-holders and in return offered them favours, benefits and profits. Provincial power-holders then negotiated these offers, trying to increase the potential benefits. These practices could be for short-term, specific or ad hoc services, such as a specific military service in wartime, or they could be for longer-term (even life-term) contracts or offices. When the imperial army failed against the Russian army, the central administration asked Alemdar Mustafa, then ayan of Ruse, to organize an army from local communities in Danubian Bulgaria and build a front along the Danube. In return, he was granted the governorship of Silistre. However, Alemdar accepted the proposal only after negotiating the additional grant for life of the district of Tirnova, with full jurisdiction. Having been granted the governorship with an imperial title, he was thus incorporated into the imperial elite. Sometimes communities were involved in these negotiations.44 In , during the crisis between the British and Ottoman empires, Karaosmanoğlu Hasan Ağa, who was then intendant of Izmir, was asked to move to Çanakkale with his military force to guard the Dardanelles against a possible British attack. However, the Izmir community petitioned Istanbul, probably with the encouragement of Hasan Ağa, asking for him to be relieved of this service, since the town needed his leadership. The Porte accordingly changed its request and asked him ‘at least’ to recruit the necessary forces from his region and send these to the Dardanelles. For this, he was granted the intendantship 45
of Aydın, a veryservice wealthy sub-province. Later, Selim III family. personally that no unwelcome or office would be imposed on the Theguaranteed same guarantee was given to the Çapanoğlu family.46 In these cases, the centre and provincial powerholders behaved not as patron and servant, but rather as partners, reaching a mutually beneficial agreement by negotiating service and benefits. In these horizontal interactions, communities could be the third voice in negotiations. Although the collective role of the community was formalized in ayan elections, it was not limited to that practice. When Osman Pazvantoğlu died in , the assembled community of Vidin asked Osman’s military comrades to leave the city and
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began negotiations concerning a successor. However, before a decision was reached, Osman’s treasurer, Molla İdris, entered Vidin and ‘persuaded’ the community to nominate him to the Porte as governor. 47 Such collective actions upheld consent and harmony of interest between the state, provincial actors and communities. Perhaps the most formal and advanced form of such partnerships is seen in taxfarming contracts. Although the empire had always engaged in financial partnerships with entrepreneurs, the malikane system added the new element of long-term administrative prerogatives. Not only did the contractor acquire a revenue unit which he held for life, he also acquired full jurisdiction over that unit. The immunity (serbestiyet ) principle, namely that no state officer other than a judge interfere with these units, made the malikane -holder a supreme authority overcould his units and their communities. The Çapanoğlus, from their base in Yozgat, were a prime example. In the s, Selim III’s advisor Tatarcık Abdullah Ağa voiced one of the criticisms made by many imperial grandees:
because governors are not allowed to interfere in the immune malikane units, unruly local notables and power-holders established themselves [in such units] in all provinces. They aggrieve the subjects. Most of them exist in a state of disobedience and recalcitrance in the provinces.48 While political alliances, negotiations for service and benefits, and contractual partnerships comprised the defining elements of the Ottoman provincial system, there was always the possibility of conflict if the parties did not agree within the terms of the partnership. However, conflict was mostly part of the negotiation. Throughout Ottoman history imperial grandees and provincial governors who challenged the empire were declared outlaws or rebels. However, as Karen Barkey has shown for the seventeenth century, rebellion was not a one-way process, but a form of negotiation.49 It was always possible for rebels to be pardoned, and even honoured with offices and titles, if the imperial state failed to suppress them or if political strategy shifted as a result of changes in the Istanbul ruling elite. Various provincial grandees and governors repeatedly crossed the boundary between legality and illegality. Perhaps one of the most radical challenges in the eighteenth century was that of Osman Pazvantoğlu, who initiated three major uprisings, in , – and –, in Danubian Bulgaria and Wallachia. Although srcinating in a provincial power-holder’s desire to be recognized as the legitimate governor of his region and an imperial office-holder, Pazvantoğlu’s challenge became the driving force behind social unrest against the reform projects of Selim III. His movement even gained an international aspect. While it is not clear whether Pazvantoğlu hoped to secede from the empire and found his own small kingdom of in initiating the Balkans, documentscoup in theinFrench archives suggest that he had some Giray, intention a pro-French Istanbul with his ally, Mehmed Cengiz a prince of the Crimean Giray dynasty. In the end, Pazvantoğlu and the state agreed terms of peace, whereby he was granted the governorship of Vidin and the revenues of Adana province as a bonus.50 The Pazvantoğlu case also shows how some provincial power-holders of the period became trans-imperial actors, bypassing the Ottoman centre and developing their own diplomatic connections in Napoleonic Europe. Ali Paşa of Ioannina sought alliances with the British, Alemdar Mustafa with the Russians, and Pazvantoğlu with the French,
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without the approval of the ruling authority in Istanbul.51 However, these diplomatic moves did not produce any clear plan to separate from the Ottoman world. Even Mehmed Ali of Egypt, who came very close to detaching himself from the empire, preferred to remain under the Ottoman imperial umbrella. Did these power-holders have ideological (or religio-political) motivations or were they just self-aggrandizing power entrepreneurs? Some provincial power-holders voiced their claims within a broader agenda of imperial politics beyond their immediate regional interests. This was especially the case when Selim III initiated his New Order reform programme, which included establishing a new army and more direct control a new treasury administration. Thissome was bound spark protestsover fromresources differentthrough segments of Ottoman society. Janissaries, factionstoin the learned hierarchy, and some parts of the larger public, openly or furtively, opposed the New Order on the grounds that reform threatened the ancient order, religion and vested interests. Several provincial power-holders participated in this opposition block.52 Pazvantoğlu’s uprising was transformed from the challenge of an unruly power-holder into popular resistance against the ‘despotism’ of the New Order led by the elites of Istanbul.53 Ismail of Ruse, an ostensible supporter of Selim, orchestrated significant resistance in alliance with local communities against the deployment of the unpopular New Army to Thrace in .54 However, two leading families in Anatolia, the Çapanoğlus and Karaosmanoğlus, supported the New Order enthusiastically and contributed extensively to it by drafting young Anatolian peasants for the new army.55 The connections of these pro- or anti-New Orderist magnates with politically motivated sufi organizations, such as the Bektaşi or Nakşibendi orders, or with certain ethno-political networks, such as the Albanian or Bosnian, also require further study.56 The highest point of power-holders’ participation as transformative figures in imperial politics was in autumn , when Alemdar Mustafa Paşa and a faction among the central elite initiated a coup in Istanbul to reinstitute the reformist regime led by the dethroned sultan Selim III. Although they failed to prevent Selim’s assassination, they deposed Mustafa IV in favour of Mahmud II and eliminated the janissary-backed ruling faction. The new grand vezir, Alemdar Mustafa, summoned his peers – provincial power-holders including the leaders of the Karasomanoğlu and the Çapanoğlu dynasties, İsmail Bey of Serres, and others – to Istanbul for an imperial assembly. Negotiation produced the contract known as the Deed of Alliance, drafted and signed by the sultan, leading grandees of the central administration, and representatives of the provincial power-holding dynasties. This contract reinforced the reform agenda, stipulating crucially the institution of a new state army. It also accepted the powerholding dynasties as legitimate partners of the imperial state, recognizing officially their autonomy, wealth, andcontinuity power. Inofreturn, the power-holders undertook to make the necessary effortsstatus for the the reforms, the well-being of the sultanate, and the perpetuity of the empire. Thus, the sultan and his central and provincial elites all became contractors (müteahhid) in a formal alliance (ittifak) and became guarantors (kefil) to each other. On the one hand, the deed was intended to consolidate the empire by uniting central and provincial power-holders. On the other hand, it enforced horizontal and reciprocal, rather than vertical, engagements. It redefined the state not as an institution belonging to the sultan but as one based on the common interest of the elites of the inner and outer spheres of the realm. The sultan’s office
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remained fundamental and the most important pillar of the state, but the sultan was no longer an absolute sovereign; he became the supreme contractor. This radical attempt to reshape the Ottoman constitution was the outcome of severe political, financial and military pressures. It was an emergency measure, and very short-lived. Within two months, Alemdar Mustafa Paşa had died in a janissary revolt, his growing regime collapsed, and the Deed of Alliance, though never officially abrogated, was not implemented. It was a turning point at which the Ottoman empire did not turn.57 CONCLUSION
The above discussion has shown how, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, provincial power-holders were connected to the empire through horizontal ties, involving negotiations, contracts and political alliances, rather than as servants linked through vertical bonds. However, these horizontal ties did not totally replace the traditional hierarchical system of the empire, and the state system based on top-down favours, appointments, hierarchy and unconditional loyalties continued to operate. Aside from the brief period in autumn , there was no question of the Ottoman sultan stepping down from his theoretical status as unaccountable supreme authority. Despite this emergency appeal to provincial power-holders, the military and administrative reforms of Selim III and later Mahmud II ultimately reconsolidated the hierarchical system of the empire with modern methods of centralized administration. A cadre of imperial bureaucrats, some of them graduates of new training colleges, came to constitute the main body of imperial power.58 Although horizontal and hierarchical tendencies co-existed and competed until the s, thereafter Ottoman administrative and military modernization triumphed and eliminated the provincial challenge to the bureaucratic state. From the s on, the powers of the regional magnates, except that of Mehmed Ali Paşa’s dynasty in Egypt, were curbed by the central state. The malikane system was abolished, tax-farming contracts were minimized, imperial governors and municipal bureaucracy replaced local power-holders, and private armies were dispersed.59 How the Ottoman central authority was able to assert itself so successfully and to curtail the power of the regional magnates is a question still to be analysed. At local level, the role of the community was consolidated through formal electoral processes resulting from municipal reforms in the tanzimat reform era (–) and beyond.60 The rise of nationalism, first in the Balkans, then in the eastern provinces, triggered the wider politicization of society, which changed the dynamics of Ottoman political culture. However, despite the elimination of some power-holders and a gradual loss of the military-fiscal powerOttoman of others,socio-political the prominentliferole of provincial notable in nineteenth-century never disappeared. Somefamilies of these families became political actors in their regions and gradually at the imperial level in the vibrant political life of the tanzimat and constitutional (–, –) periods; some moved into trade or commercial agriculture.61 Others were incorporated into the Ottoman bureaucracy. When the Ottoman empire gradually lost its Balkan provinces between the Treaty of Berlin () and the Balkan wars (–), the Muslim notable families of the Balkans also lost their political role, wealth and power, and most of them migrated to Anatolia. However, in Albania, in Anatolia and in the
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Arab world, they continued to exercise power until the end of the empire and beyond. During the process that gave birth to modern Turkey between and , the Anatolian provincial elite set up alliances with the military-bureaucratic cadres, in a way similar to what happened in , and gradually mutated into the national elite of the early Turkish republic.62 NOTES * The author would like to express his gratitude to Cemal Kafadar, Engin D. Akarlı, Christine Woodhead, Hakanadvice Karateke, Ergenç, Oktay Özel,ofTristan Stein and Patricia D. Blessing for their guidance, and Özer assistance in the writing this essay. BOA, HAT (an imperial council report advising the sultan on several financial issues, dated /). The Albanian Mehmed Ali Paşa was an exception in , though he and his family subsequently became established in Egypt. Akyıldız and Hanioğlu . For a more comprehensive sketch, see McGowan : –. For earlier comparative studies on provincial magnates, see Adanir ; Akarlı ; Khoury ; Masters ; Moutaftchieva ; Özkaya . Köhbach ; Naci ; Pavičevič . Fleming ; Skiotis . For a recent publication of the extensive archive of Ali Paşa’s establishment, see Panagiotopoulos et al. . Vacalopoulos : –. Gradeva b; Zens ; Zens : –; Sadat , ; Özkaya : –. Uzunçarşılı ; Miller ; Erdoğan et al. ; Bakardjieva . Nagata ; Nagata and Emecen ; Veinstein . Uzunçarşılı ; Mert ; Duygu . Şahin ; Serbestoğlu ; Karagöz . Schilcher : –; Rafeq : –; Barbir : –; Shamir . Joudah . Schilcher : –; Akarlı : –; Philipp : –, –; Cohen ; Tekindağ . Akarlı : –; Fahmy , ; Sayyid-Marsot, ; Hathaway , ; Wasserstein and Ayalon ; Crecelius . E.g., Çavuşzade Hacı İsmail Ağa of Şumnu, Sarıklıoğlu of Hacıoğlu Pazarı, Hacı Ömeroğlu of Hazergrad, Dağdevirenoğlu of Edirne, the Katipoğlus of Izmir, the Cihanoğlus of Aydın, the Müderrisoğlus of Ankara, the Köse Paşa family of Divriği and Sivas, the Öküzoğlus of Sinop, the Dedeoğlus of Giresun, the Tuzcuoğlus of Rize, the Nasuhoğlus of Kütahya, the Kozanoğlus of the Cilician Plain, the Küçükalioğlus of southern Cilicia, the Çıldıroğlus of Kars and Ağrı, the Rişvanzades of Malatya, the Bayezitoğlus and Dulkadiroğlus of Maraş, Zahir al-‘Umar of Palestine, Süleyman Paşa of Akka, the Jalilis of Mosul, etc. For a study on networks among regional power-holders and bandit groups, see Esmer . Özoğlu : –; Minorsky ; Filipović . Göçek . For examples when inheritance was sold to the heir of a deceased power-holder, see BOA, CML (re the inheritance of Karayılanzade Haci Mehmed Ağa, August ); BOA, HAT (re the inheritance of Karaosmanoğlu Hacı Hüseyin Ağa, ). Dimitropoulos : –. Yenişehirlioğlu ; Acun ; Arel . For the register of İsmail Aga’s vakıf, see National Library – Kiril i Metodii, Department of Oriental Studies, Sofia: R . Also see Radušev et al. : no. . Görkem : –.
— Ali Yaycıoğlu — Legrand . For the military alliances of the provincial power-holders, see BOA, CA (which includes a list of troops arriving in Sofia under the command of provincial leaders of Rumeli, January ). İnalcık ; Radušev . Yaman ; Özkaya . Genç ; Cezar : –; Salzmann and her essay, chapter , in this volume; Sućeska ; Özvar . Canbakal : –; Ergenç . Sućeska ; İnalcık : –; Moutaftchieva ; Nagata [] : –; Özkaya : –; Radušev ; Yaycıoğlu : –. For a letter handed to the representative of Canikli Battal Paşa for delivery to his patron, see BOA, HAT . For a dispute between Ahmet Cezzar Paşa and his own representative to the Porte in , see BOA, HAT . Subrahmanyam and Bayly . Akarlı . Cezar . Siruni . For a standard account, see Karal . Vacalopoulos : –. Antonius : –. For critiques of Egyptian national history-writing, see Fahmy : –; Di-Capua . See also Ehud Toledano’s essay, chapter , in this volume. Gökçe ; Yaycıoğlu : –. Mert : –. Uzunçarşılı : –; Miller : –. For negotiations between Mustafa and the Porte, see Uzunçarşılı : –. BOA, HAT on the contribution of Karaosmanoğlus in the battle, . BOA, HAT andHüseyin -A Ağa (letters from thetheir grand vezir toNovember Çapanoğlu Süleyman Bey and Karaosmanoğlu Hacı concerning services, ). BOA, HAT (report from the prince of Wallachia concerning the death of Osman Pazvantoğlu, ). Tatarcık Abdullah Ağa [] : . Barkey : –. Zens ; Gradeva b; Kırımlı and Yaycıoğlu forthcoming. Siorokas , ; Miller : –; Gradeva : –; Zens : –. Shaw : –, –. An Austrian diplomat in Istanbul reported to Vienna the following note: ‘Rayas qui opprimés par des vexations et des surcharges devaient regarder comme leur libérateur un homme lequel parlant toujours le langage d’un fêlé musulman sut adroitement accréditer l’espoir de l’abolition de toutes les nouveautés du Nizami Gedid’. ‘Précis sur les affaires de Paswandoglou’, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, Türkei V, Karton . Yaycıoğlu : –. Mert : –; Uzunçarşılı : –; Shaw : . Clayer ; Anastasopoulos ; Sadat .
Akyıldız and Hanioğlu ; Miller : –; İnalcık a: –; Yaycıoğlu . Findley . Çadırcı ; Hanioğlu : –. Ortaylı ; Devereux . For a recent study on a merchant notable family, the Mataracizades of Rize, see Mataracı . Tanör . For a historical-anthropological study on provincial elites in the Turkish Republic and their Ottoman past, see Meeker : –.
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE ARA BICS PEAKI NG WORLD IN THE OTTOMAN PERIOD A socio-political analysis
Ehud R. Toledano
A
lmost the entire Middle East and North Africa came under Ottoman rule during the first half of the sixteenth century. Selim I’s forces took over the heartland of the Arabic-speaking world, mainly Syria and Egypt, in a major campaign during and against the ailing Mamluk sultanate. Iraq (and parts of Iran) fell to the Ottomans under Süleyman in . North Africa, excluding Morocco, was taken in the mid- to late s, and finally Yemen in . Thereafter, the Ottoman sovereigns reigned over a Muslim-majority empire, the largest Islamic state of the early modern and modern eras and the undisputed leader of Sunni Islam. They boasted sovereignty over Mecca and Medina in the Hijaz, where the holiest shrines of Islam rested, and consequently became protectors of the pilgrimage routes to Arabia. The conquest of Iraq also meant that, for centuries to come, the Ottomans faced a formidable rival on their eastern frontiers, the Shi’ite dynasties of Iran. Last to come under Ottoman rule, the Arabic-speaking territories were also the last to remain under the sultans’ government, for some three hundred years. The French took over Algeria in and Tunisia in , in the same year as the British occupied Egypt. The entire Middle East came under European control at the end of the First World War. An age of integrated, inclusive rule under the sultans, based on shared values, practices and traditions, was replaced by European imperialism and rapid, top-down modernization. This essay will be devoted partly to understanding the nature of Ottoman rule and the many ways in which it differed from what followed. While focusing on the dynamics of socio-political processes among Middle Eastern and North African elites, we shall also consider the impact Ottoman rule had onOne other, groups within those societies. canmajority, hardly overstate the importance of internal diversity to the making of the Ottoman empire in every aspect of life. In gradually bringing territories and peoples under their rule, the Ottomans created a power structure designed to deal with difference and to meet the many challenges this posed to government. Terrain, climate and modes of political, economic, social and cultural interaction varied from region to region, from province to province. The mountains and ravines of the Balkans, the plateaus of Anatolia, the huge river beds of Iraq and Egypt, the shores of the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Perso-Arabian Gulf, the ridges of the Levant, and the deserts
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of Arabia, Syria–Iraq, Egypt and North Africa provided the habitat for diverse societies which spanned the entire spectrum of human social and communal organization. The Ottomans had to devise a system of government that would manage and provision the urban populations of large cities such as Istanbul, Cairo, Salonika, Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, Tripoli and Algiers. That system would also have to collect taxes from rural agricultural communities, control nomadic tribes, and ensure the safety of merchants and pilgrims across sea, river and land. The empire witnessed large population movements; nomadic-pastoralist communities such as Turcomans, Berbers and Bedouins are still an important part of present-day realities in these regions.orMovement, both of groups and of individuals, wasplains constant. Conquering, retreating passing armies; tribal migrations across deserts, and plateaus; pilgrims and traders coming alone or with their families, staying or returning; missionaries, roaming dervishes, aspiring santons – all brought with them their languages, religions and cultures and contributed their share to the already diversified populations and traditions within the empire. Although the population was overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, there were also sizeable communities of Shi‘ites, Druze, various Christian sects, Jews, and other smaller faith-based communities. Arabic was the dominant language but, owing to the low level of literacy, the predominant vernaculars created a reality of much larger linguistic differentiation, which often impeded direct communication with the Ottoman Turkish-speaking ruling elite. Urban areas housed centres of education, learning and cultural creativity, where riches and luxurious lifestyles co-existed alongside poverty and deprivation. Until modern urbanization from the later nineteenth century, more than per cent of the population lived in rural areas; these women and men barely eked out a living from cultivation of seasonal crops and were constantly exposed to the hazards of nature and man-made hardships. Between droughts, floods and government officials sent to collect taxes, impose corvée service or draft them into the military, peasants and urban workers across the empire were vulnerable and only too often powerless to affect their own lives.1 However, when the state performed its duty to protect and nurture the sultan’s subjects – more often than not the case in Ottoman history – the countryside prospered, and the quality of life was higher than in contemporary empires in Europe and Asia. The Ottoman empire provided for the Middle East and North Africa an effective system of government and a political culture that outlived its rule and shaped the modern history of these regions. Beyond their visual imprint on architecture and landscape, the Ottomans’ impact upon communal traditions was profound. As Albert Hourani rightly observed, modern travellers in the region must notice ‘how deep the Ottoman impress went and how lasting is the unity it has imposed on many different countries andold the peoples’. Ottoman-Arab With special elitesemphasis as on their political culture, Hourani characterized patient, cautious, carefully balancing one force against another in order to neutralize them all, giving your enemy time and scope to ruin himself, seeing how far you can go but always leaving a way of escape if you have gone too far. 2 The Ottoman style of government endured because it was embedded in flexible structures and pragmatic practices, relatively non-invasive methods of rule, and a
— The Arabic-speaking world in the Ottoman period —
remarkable capacity to fuse Islamic orthodoxy, popular Sufism, and components of local belief systems into a viable ethos that successfully glued together society and government. The empire certainly had its up and down turns, an historical inevitability for a such a vast and long-lived political and economic entity. In certain regions at certain times, tensions developed that turned one group against another, with the government having to restore order. HISTORIOGRAPHY: OLD AND NEW DISCOURSES
Over the past quarterEastern century, Ottoman-Arab onewave of the active sub-fields in Middle and North Africanhistory studies.hasAnbeen earlier of most studies was spawned in the s by Hourani’s call for a local, Arab-oriented focus to replace the outside, European and Ottoman-imperial perspectives on the history of these regions.3 Studies inspired by this trend and based on sources srcinating from the area itself – chronicles, court records, memoirs – dominated the literature from the late s to the early s.4 Despite a pronounced interest in broader social issues and nationalist movements, many of these studies placed a strong socio-political emphasis on the elites, whether urban political, merchant capitalist or religious intellectual. By stressing the Arab and the local, these works effectively wrote the Ottomans out of Middle Eastern, and to a lesser extent NorthAfrican, history. Constructing a nationalist narrative meant exalting the nation and its heroic past, while denigrating those forces that were 5 Whether seen during the struggle for independence as colonizing or supra-national. intended or not, many studies in this wave ended up cohering with the narrative of local or Arab nationalism, ignoring Ottoman sources and Ottomanist discourse. From the early s, a number of monographs appeared that in one way or another shared a common ground in studying the Ottoman chapters of the history of the Arabic-speaking regions.6 These studies have effectively brought the Ottomans back into that history, rehabilitating their record as rulers and their heritage. Although resisted by nationalist historians, it is fairly safe to state that these works have accomplished at least two things. First, the discourse on Ottoman history in these regions now includes the long nineteenth century – i.e., until the end of the empire – and no longer ends abruptly and unconvincingly with the three-year occupation of Egypt by Bonaparte (–).7 Second, the accepted notion of misrule and overall stagnation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been replaced by a much more differentiated and sophisticated concept of the changing modes of Ottoman government and the internal dynamics of elite history.8 Attention has also shifted to non-elite groups and even to marginal people in the Ottoman societies of these regions: the vast agricultural communities which created 9
households the wealth that and rural paid societies; most of 10thethetaxes enslaved and who supported were forced the empire; into thewomen sultans’in domains urban from Eastern Europe (up until the eighteenth century), Africa and the Caucasus (from the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth centuries); 11 the workers, urban poor, and education;12 the pearl divers of the Perso-Arabian gulf; 13 those receiving charity, the inform, and those working in hospitals;14 and street performers and their art.15 Meanwhile, other elite groups – those not part of, but closely interacting with, the officeholding power elite – were also being studied, especially merchant communities and the networks of the learned (Turkish, ulema; Arabic, ulama).16 An important source
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for writing such social and economic history has been şeriat court records, on which research has greatly intensified in recent years, yielding fascinating results and creating interesting controversies.17 All these studies contribute towards a much better informed assessment of Ottoman rule in the Middle East and North Africa. The recently revised notions discussed below include: changes during the first phase of Ottoman rule, from the sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries, resulting from the fact that the entire Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa became part of a new economic and administrative imperial system; the new understanding of internal transformation in the later empire gained from theasrevision of the ‘decline paradigm’; the emergence the Ottomanlocal household the main socio-political and economic unit in theofArab provincial network from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries; and, finally, the gradual rise of nationalist elites towards and in the wake of the First World War. THE FIRST PHASE OF OTTOMAN RULE
Despite careful use of existing records over the past half century or so, 18 the great variety of models employed by the Ottomans in the initial stage of rule have created some confusion as to what policies were adopted where and when. Land and tax surveys exist for much of the Levant, but not, apparently, for North Africa and Egypt; the registers of decisions and orders issued by the imperial council have been exploited for some parts of Syria and Palestine, but less for other areas.19 İnalcık’s widely accepted view of the two-stage conquest method adopted by the Ottomans still holds true.20 That is, when taking over a territory, the Ottomans sought first to utilize existing systems of government and taxation, so as to facilitate a smooth transition from the old regime. The second stage consisted of introducing Ottoman-based notions of administration, predicated on land surveys conducted by Ottoman officials, and on articulation of Ottoman law with local practices. The imperial elite thereby achieved their goals with minimal opposition from provincial populations, while a mutually beneficial relationship between sovereign and subjects could emerge. In Egypt and Syria, remnants of the previous Mamluk regime were incorporated into the Ottoman military and administrative structures, ensuring continuity and, in most cases, loyalty to the new sovereign. Thus, the first phase was transitional, with Ottoman rule gradually taking hold over the Arab provinces over several decades, through new forms of taxation – in some the timar or dirlik system was applied, in others not21 – new administrative units, and new hierarchies. For the Arabic-speaking provinces, Ottoman rule meant, for the most part, a unified space for economic and cultural interaction, a comparatively secure environment for agricultural production and trade, but loss of political power, as a result of being governed from an outside capital, Istanbul, rather than from regionally based capitals, such as Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, or Algiers and Tripoli.22 The trade-off between secure economic and cultural unity, on the one hand, and political downgrading, on the other, was a principal feature of the first phase of Ottoman rule in the Arabic-speaking regions. It did not, however, prevail beyond the turn of the seventeenth century, due to major changes in modes of governance and intra
— The Arabic-speaking world in the Ottoman period —
social alliances. However, before assessing those changes, we must briefly address the debate over seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ottoman decline. THE DECLINE PARADIGM DEBATE REVISITED
In the scholarly literature produced by Ottomanists since the mid-s, the hitherto prevailing view of Ottoman decline has been effectively debunked. However, only too often, the results of painstaking research and innovative revisions offered in that literature have not yet percolated down to scholars working outside Ottoman studies. Historians in adjacent fields have tended to rely on earlier classics and later uninformed surveys which perpetuate older, now deconstructed, views. Since the debate draws a great deal on evidence coming from the history of the Arabic-speaking provinces of the empire, a brief explanation of the notion of decline is appropriate here in order to clarify some common misunderstandings. The general, traditional trajectory of Ottoman history was perceived as rising from the late fourteenth century to a peak during the middle years of the sixteenth, in the reign of Süleyman the Lawgiver/Magnificent (–). From the last quarter of that century, Ottoman power and efficacy are seen as consistently declining until the empire’s demise during the First World War. Some might see a temporary rise from the s to the s, resulting from the European-inspired tanzimat reforms; others view this as a flawed and restricted project which could not save the empire from continued disintegration.23 The problem with this convenient view is that it sought to condense into a few sentences a highly diverse, greatly differentiated and lengthy history. Also, the alleged decline was supposed to have occurred in all aspects of life – political, economic, social and cultural. Unlikely as that rise-and-fall paradigm might now seem to an impartial observer, it nevertheless dominated views of Ottoman history until the last two decades of the twentieth century and still hampers nonOttomanist understanding of the empire. However, recent studies have provided a solid basis for a thorough revision of the Ottoman decline paradigm.24 The current view is that no generalization can hold true for the entire period of the late sixteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, for the whole empire, and in all aspects of life.25 We should instead consider the history of specific regions or provinces during shorter periods of time and in one or two elements. We need to find evidence of, and provide explanations for, say, Egyptian economic history in the second half of the eighteenth century, or Iraq’s socio-political regime in the early nineteenth century, rather than seek overarching, total explanations. One of the main arguments for the decline paradigm was the weakening control of the central government over the provinces. Local elites consisting of notable families (both urbanfrom andIstanbul rural), merchants leading ulema were perceived as seizing effective power during theand seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and becom26 ing de facto rulers of those provinces. Leaders such as the so-called Mamluks of Egypt or Iraq, the Azms of Damascus, the Ma‘ns of Mount Lebanon, the Deys of Algiers or the Beys of Tunis were depicted as virtually autonomous, if not outright independent, of the Ottomans. The exclusive use of regional sources in Arabic led to an Arabicized version of history and to virtual ‘cleansing’ of all traces of Ottoman presence in government and society, from administrative language to legal and state institutions. Thus, the vast and intricate social, political and economic networking, and the
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Ottoman-Arab cultural fusion on all levels of society, became almost completely invisible to scholars and readers alike. However, when Ottoman sources are consulted and an Ottomanist perspective is added, the view emerges of an empire struggling to cope with vast changes in military technology, economic circumstances and modes of social interaction. These challenges were met by changes in modes of governance which provided the flexibility and adaptability to enable the survival of various modalities of Ottoman rule. Thus, for example, the introduction of the malikane tax-farming system in the eighteenth century, rather than weakening the hold of the centre over the Arab provinces, in fact created a major stake localstrongly. households in the fiscal of the empire and themselves bound them to 27 Households it evenformore at well-being the centre effectively aligned with provincial households, creating vibrant and resilient networks, through which public goods – including economic, social, cultural and political assets – flowed in both directions. This infrastructure of households formed the backbone of Ottoman rule in the Arabic-speaking regions. Part of the problem inherent in the decline paradigm is its functionalist and Orientalist nature, an aspect which has been generally overlooked or downplayed even in critical writings. Functionalism is best known for its attribution of organic qualities to non-organismic entities. Organizations, institutions and states are seen as having gone through the life-cycle stages experienced by humans or animals: they are born, they grow, mature, stagnate with age, and finally die. Their constituent parts are metaphorically likened to various organs in the body, each serving a function, each dependent upon the other; all are gradually affected when one or another suffers illness, and dysfunction then disrupts the required balance. The nineteenth-century Ottoman empire, with its diseased institutions, was considered ‘the sick man of Europe’. The decline paradigm was one of the main building blocks of Orientalism. Conceived as the ultimate ‘other’, the Ottoman empire was first the feared Grand Turk, then the defeated and denigrated rival of a rising, triumphant Europe. The empire was initially perceived as the reverse image of Christian Europe – as technologically successful, militarily powerful, economically wealthy, culturally sophisticated and morally superior. Subsequently, it was seen as a military state in retreat, conceding large territories to European powers and unable to hold its own population under central control. Its economy was stagnating, its social fabric disintegrating, its administration chaotic and inefficient, and its cultural creativity lost and incapable of self-regeneration. Unlike vibrant and active Europe, the Ottoman empire was considered passive and reactive, in dire need of outside, Western stimuli in order to join the modern world. Within that functionalist-Orientalist view, the Arabic-speaking provinces were considered the as both the evidence for, and theand victims Ottoman leaders among notable families, merchants thoughtdecline. to haveLocal pushed out ulemaof,were the Ottoman central government and established effective rule, either autonomous or even outright independent. That was accomplished not as part of changing Ottoman modalities of governance, but as a result of conflict and struggles for power. In this discourse of decline, Istanbul had failed to enforce its will on these provincial elites, and had to content itself with mere suzerainty and a limited measure of influence in local matters. Such accounts of Ottoman-Arab history fed into the larger picture of the European-inspired decline paradigm, but, perhaps no less significantly, they became
— The Arabic-speaking world in the Ottoman period —
part and parcel of the nationalist narratives of victimology developed by the new Arab nation-states established after the Second World War and the collapse of European imperialism. Thus, doubly reinforced by western scholarship and local narratives, the decline paradigm became an almost insurmountable barrier to a proper understanding of the Ottoman chapter in the history of the Arab peoples. Efforts to break that barrier mounted by a previous generation of Ottomanists28 had addressed not only centre–periphery relations, but the entire scope of the imperial system. They viewed seventeenth- and eighteenth-century changes as ‘decentralization’ rather than ‘decline’, thus restoring agency to the central government and seeing the entire process based on mutual consent between central However, thatasinterpretation appeared to many among the and new provincial generationauthorities. of scholars as rather more of a semantic change than an analytic or conceptual shift, let alone a paradigmatic one.29 Recent studies have therefore sought to produce an in-depth, integrated explanation that would better represent the realities of Ottoman-Arab coexistence and co-operation. LOCALIZATION, OTTOMANIZAT ION AND ELITE HOUSEHOLD NETWORKING
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, developments in military technology encouraged both European and Ottoman armies towards increased use of muskets and cannons. Ottoman reliance on the rural, fief-holding cavalry forces (sipahi) and the lowtech weaponry wielding imperial infantry of the Janissaries ( yeniçeri) gave way to larger and better equipped ground forces and to complex siege warfare. Both shifts were manpower-intensive and expensive. In both Europe and the Ottoman empire, these changes transformed states and the ways in which military-administrative elites waged and funded wars. Coping with these enormous challenges and finding the appropriate responses through a sea of socio-economic and political changes is, in fact, the story of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ottoman history. A remarkable adaptation to new realities, rather than decline and disintegration, was its main feature; it reflects the resourcefulness, pragmatism and flexibility in thought and action of the Ottoman military-administrative elite, rather than their ineptitude or incompetence. Although inspired by the central government, these changes were not necessarily either planned or premeditated. Rather, they were the result of continuing, dynamic responses to developing challenges. The new military technologies required large-scale recruitment of manpower into the Ottoman army; the janissary force swelled from about , men in the early fifteenth century to around , in , and to 30
and professionalized, more than , in with .enlarged The army and more as a articulated whole became regular much andmore irregular diversified infantry, auxiliary cavalry, artillery, and logistical support units than ever before. One can appreciate the skills, materiel and funds required, for example, to move , troops, horses, pack animals (including an exceedingly large number of camels, providing an estimated , camel loads), heavy guns and other equipment through Anatolia to lay siege to Baghdad in .31 An empire that could mount such a complex operation and regain control of an important province can hardly be described as being in decline.
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This huge army also differed from its predecessors in another important way. Whereas the janissary corps had srcinally consisted of the sultan’s kuls – i.e., his enslaved pages, personal entourage, and the core of his military-administrative elite – the new and much larger force was considerably more diversified in srcin, background and training and no longer maintained its direct and personal loyalty to the sovereign. Also, if the old military-administrative elite was Istanbul-based and its provincial rotations were relatively short – two to three years was the norm – the new imperial elite of the seventeenth century stayed longer in the provinces to maintain control and a permanent state presence. The once prevalent devşirme had represented the sultan’s kulseventeenth monopoly on recruitment s into his household and theirmany exclusive in the palace school. But, fromofthe century onwards, troopstraining were provincial recruits, trained in local elite households by imperial kuls, to whom they were loyal, becoming the kuls of kuls (kulların kulları). During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such households emerged as the basic unit of belonging, or attachment, throughout the Ottoman lands. The Arabic-speaking provinces were no exception.32 Households served as focal points for a two-pronged process: the localization of the imperial military-administrative elite and the Ottomanization of the provincial elites, producing Ottoman-local elites – e.g., Ottoman-Egyptian, Ottoman-Tunisian, Ottoman-Syrian, etc. At the same time, the Ottoman imperial elite became less mobile, with posts being assigned within limited regions, so that specialization according to the needs of specific provincial clusters was built up within the military and the bureaucracy. 33 By aligning themselves with local guilds and merchants, and marrying into local families, imperial elite members developed strong ties to the local economy, society and culture, linking their own and their children’s future to one province, often to one city. Meanwhile, local elites – urban and rural notables, ulema and merchants – sought to become part of the imperial administration by obtaining government office, and were Ottomanized in the process. Ottomanization meant the piecemeal political, economic, social and cultural integration of Arabic-speaking urban and rural elite families into the Ottoman state and its ruling elite. A diverse and complex process, Ottomanization was not uniform, nor did it occur everywhere simultaneously. In some regions, such as southern Iraq, it was more economic than socio-political; in others, such as North Africa and Yemen, it was more political than socio-cultural; and yet, in others, most notably Egypt and the Levant, it was both socio-cultural and political. In Syria it happened early, owing to conditions being ripe and enabling, whereas in districts such as Algiers and Tripoli, it was slow-going because of various impediments, mostly of distance and poor communication. The acquisition of Ottoman Turkish was key to entering the military-administrative establishment and the selective adoption of
elements of in thethe canon of elite culture and etiquette. Precisely because of this, manization Arabic-speaking provinces was a slow process and took holdOttoonly around the middle of the eighteenth century – i.e., relatively late in comparison with the Anatolian and even the Balkan provinces. Throughout the empire, the localizing imperial elite and the Ottomanizing local elites gradually merged into Ottoman-local elites, which better served the interests of both sides and facilitated the emergence of new modalities of rule. Imperial militaryadministrative office-holders gradually developed interests in the local economies of the Arabic-speaking provinces, mixed socially, learned an Arabic dialect, and acquired
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local cultural tastes. Perhaps most significantly, they married into local families and merged into provincial society. The Ottoman-Egyptian Kazdağlıs and Mehmet Ali’s household, or the Eyübizades of Iraq, provide good examples of localization. Simultaneously, families of Arabic-speaking urban and rural notables, merchants and ulema strove to place their members in the Ottoman office-holding elite, and thereby gain access to the power, prestige and wealth that those offices afforded. The struggle that developed among them enabled the imperial elite in the capital, and its representatives in the provinces, to weave local elites into its empire-wide networks. The Azms of Damascus exemplify successful Ottomanization in Syria, as do the Jalilis of Mosul. This and multi-layered processand enabled Ottoman power to be wielded effectivelyintricate in the period of growing military financial challenges. Of major importance in this process was the household (Turkish, kapı; Arabic, bayt), which served as the social, economic, political and even cultural unit that promoted Ottoman–Arab integration. Households emerged within military formations, such as garrison regiments in the provinces, within the provincial administration, among the ulema and in merchant and notable circles. The model for emulation remained the sultan’s household in Istanbul, with Ottoman-local grandees attempting to copy its features and style as far as their financial resources permitted. Households recruited and socialized new members mainly through biological-kin relationships, marriage, purchase of enslaved persons, and acceptance of voluntary offers of loyalty and services by individuals in return for patronage. Members of the household head’s nuclear and extended family formed the core, with the enslaved (Turkish, kuls; Arabic, mamluks) and freeborn retainers as the first circle of loyalty and protection. The presence and use of kuls/mamluks must not be confused with the quite different phenomenon encountered in the previous Mamluk sultanate in Egypt (–). Kuls and mamluks were part and parcel of the Ottoman system and Ottoman-Arab household government. The Ottoman–Mamluk dichotomy posited in Orientalist writings for Egypt and Iraq is false and misleading: Georgian ‘ mamluks’ in Iraq were, in fact, Ottoman-Iraqi kuls (or, more accurately, Ottoman-Baghdadi and OttomanBasran kuls). In both cases, kuls were described as mamluks or neo-mamluks for no reason other than the simple fact that kul in Turkish would be commonly rendered in Arabic as mamluk and would appear thus in contemporary Arabic chronicles and documents.34 Although households surely existed earlier, they came to play a distinct and more pivotal role from around onwards. One possible reason might be that the process of localization required new patronage bases and the construction of new networks for interacting with the local population and elites, and for tapping into local resources. A household seems to have been an ideal solution, a platform that could integrate the imperial elitethat andwere localeconomic, forces bothsocial, horizontally it offered attachments and benefits cultural and vertically; political. While forming initially around the nuclear and extended family of the founder, from the outset households relied on patronage relationships between the head of the household and a broad array of clients. An essential component was the founder’s retainers, who were a sort of militia force who protected the interests of military-administrative office-holders and their households. Merchant and ulema households also recruited retainers, but more often relied on alliances with households that already possessed large and strong militias.35
— Ehud R. Toledano —
Another major component consisted of the men and women who produced the household wealth, which enabled its expansion through recruitment and networking. These were the cultivators of the lands given to the head of the household by the state, and his business managers – i.e., those who ran urban income-yielding assets or collected taxes on his estates. Inter-household alliances promoted common interests and were duly cemented by a web of marriages among members of households within the same faction or coalition. Thus, women and men were linked through harem networks, forging social, economic and political ties; one of their main goals was to place their men into state offices and their women into influential conjugal relations. Though essentially a constructed households also had a physical being located in estates, often onenotion, or several complexes housing dozens ordimension, hundreds of individuals who performed a wide variety of functions, including command and control, enforcement, financial management, service and trade. Ottoman-local – here Ottoman-Arab – household and patronage networks display some different features to political and social patronage systems known from European, Asian and even African notabilities. Open and inclusive by definition and nature, the Ottoman system sought to bring local elites and their protégé, dependent groups into the imperial fold and deliberately to grant them a stake in the well-being of the system. Recruiting locals into the army and bureaucracy, and socially integrating them through marriage and concubinage, cemented their sense of belonging to the Ottoman empire and enhanced their loyalty to the ruling dynasty and the sultan. On the lower level, household competition would first appear in towns where the local governor resided, but soon ventured outside, realizing that, for it to be effective, a network had to spread beyond sub-district, district and even province bounds. Successful household coalitions had to be connected to the imperial capital, where officeholders consolidated their patronage networks through such ‘new-type’ households. In the seventeenth century, the crucial stepping-stone towards household consolidation – that is, its social reproduction – was the ability to survive the founder’s death and to establish a multi-generational structure. In the Arabic-speaking provinces until the latter part of the century, many households disintegrated when the founder died, thus opening the way to renewed struggle for the leadership of his household and for repositioning vis-à-vis other households. This often resulted in the formation of new households, new alliances and new factions. However, by , some households and factions had proved more resilient than others and better adapted to changing circumstances; incessant competition over power and resources gave way to growing stability. During the first quarter of the eighteenth century, in every major Ottoman-Arab province, one faction of households emerged as hegemonic, securing for its leader and his lieutenants nearly full control of its body politic economy. The main offices hence alsoofaccess to and appropriation of theand main income-generating assets, of fellstate, into the hands members of that household. While the intense political struggles that preceded stabilization reflect the active involvement of the imperial elite in provincial affairs, the emergence of hegemonic rule attested to the maturing of localization and Ottomanization processes, and to the entrenchment of Ottoman-local elite households. Among the most famous of these households were the Kazdağlıs in Egypt, the Eyübizades in Iraq (mainly in Baghdad and Basra), the Jalilis in Mosul, the Azms in Syria, the Husaynis in Tunis and the Karamanlıs in Libya. Inclusivist in nature, the Ottoman-local household proved
— The Arabic-speaking world in the Ottoman period —
to be the most effective and efficient unit for appropriating and distributing political, economic and social resources. Within households, the role of women was significant. Marriages linked households both socio-politically and economically, with harems serving as the focal point for bonding and politicking, and harem networking crucial to the success of the household. On a smaller scale, adoption and suckling relationships (attaching wet nurses and their families to the household) also played a role in recruitment and socialization. Bonding ensured that patronage would flow from top to bottom and loyalty from the bottom up, linking people from various elites to non-elite groups and individuals. Ottoman-Arab societies therefore coheredNot bothinfrequently, vertically (within a household) and horizontally (alliances among households). individuals were bonded to a household in more than one way, as, for example, when an enslaved retainer of the household head was also married to his daughter and serving under him as governor of a sub-district. Individuals who were not attached to a household were often marginalized, which meant exposure to danger, both physical and economic. Those without any form of affiliation – to a household, neighbourhood, guild or community (religious, sufi, ethnic) – were to a significant degree cut loose from society. They were identity-less, anonymous to the rest of society – that is, to those reliably attached to a household or another social unit. When moving about a village or town anywhere in the empire, unattached persons were conspicuous to the rest of the population, who recognized each other by face and name or by clothes and appearance. The anonymity of an unattached person marked him or her out as a ‘stranger-outsider’ (Turkish, garip; Arabic, gharib) and caused suspicion and mistrust.36 Such persons had to fend for themselves and their dependants, often banding together for mutual assistance, a behaviour not infrequently seen as threatening to social order and public safety, and hence criminalized by the state. On the margins of Ottoman-Arab societies, existence was precarious, survival uncertain. In urban areas, such persons found refuge inside and around mosques and other public places, where they begged, stole and borrowed. Women were often pushed into prostitution. In the countryside, groups of bandits and highway robbers were common wherever government enforcement seemed lax; the celali phenomenon spilled into northern Syria, while further south, east and west Bedouin raids flourished in similar circumstances.37 However, as Ottoman-local households entrenched themselves in the Arabic-speaking provinces during the eighteenth century, they reasserted control of the cities and the hinterland, in part co-opting unruly groups and Bedouin chiefs into the Ottoman state network, thereby making them part of a responsible social order. In the nineteenth century, the recentralizing and reformatory tanzimat state stepped in to help weakonand to individuals thevulnerable margins.38groups by offering protection, employment and shelter Economically, localization-Ottomanization required that local elites share provincial resources with imperial elite members through the redistribution of tax-generating assets in both rural and urban settings. Tax-farming contracts were used to appropriate the agricultural surplus and assign it to office-holders, first for short periods, then via long-term (iltizam) and life-time (malikane) grants. But, as the Ottoman-local household became predominant, Istanbul allowed larger portions of revenue to be spent in the provinces, rather than being transferred to the capital. This not only enabled the
e f h t o n I yra e.l rib yt L sn a eh t f mo to n t o O it .) yl ec 6 e ll 5 8 ivt o 4 c ce 0 n it th -1 si n 2 d I. 6 Z a )? S in 3 U tl 0 C i 9 u 1 L . b d .g y,r ( en o tu tae (n n ec B o i o si h t in vi n o D ee t s etin A n p y h rga n - b o id h p t ma o , gr h P o ri to d a o n h C P as ,e . t u yr n ri sq tee P o s mms il ec erg n A k o u ed lm C ma h e M M as i d .1 n 0 u 3 o e r r u rego g i f F
— The Arabic-speaking world in the Ottoman period —
elites to prosper and support a luxurious lifestyle, but also provided employment and protection to large portions of the population, who were absorbed into households in a variety of production and service roles. This integration on the elite level, with the concomitant articulation of the entire social order, left an indelible mark on modern Middle Eastern and North African societies. In the nineteenth century, some Ottoman-local hegemonic households turned into local-Ottoman dynasties. In Egypt, the family of Mehmet Ali (–), which ultimately replaced the Kazdağlıs, managed to achieve dynastic rule and maintain it until the revolution, well beyond the end of Ottoman rule. In Tunisia, the Husaynids passed from to dynastic survived the French occupation of . In Libya, thehegemony Karamanlıs governedrule welland after and the Italian occupation. But this was only one track for Ottoman-local elites. Another was imposed on some of them during renewed centralization efforts under the tanzimat state, which removed the hegemonic households in Syria and Iraq and replaced them with direct rule from Istanbul. The process described above changed gear towards the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and Ottoman-local elites became in many aspects more local than Ottoman. Still, a measure of their commitment to the empire and their sense of having been part of its governing elite was tested during the First World War.39 By and large, those elites proved loyal to Ottomanism and reluctant to embrace newly emerging forms of Arab and local nationalisms. Indeed, even after the empire’s demise and the rise of European colonial regimes, Ottoman notions and practices continued to shape much of the political culture in the successor Arab nation-states. These were heavily influenced by patterns that had evolved during the last three centuries of imperial rule. Rather than being foreign or alien, these patterns and practices were rather a joint product of the inclusivist interaction that welded the imperial to the local. The strong link between political and economic interaction, the belief in diversification through placement of family members into competing networks to minimize risk and increase security, the overwhelming impact of patronage politics, the lingering effect of ‘grandee families’, and the presence of both formal and informal dynastic orders are some of the salient features that the Ottoman system bequeathed to modern Middle Eastern and North African societies. NOTES
See, for example, in the case of Egypt, Ener ; Cuno . Hourani a: . Hourani b. E.g., Ma’oz ; Bakhit ; Cohen ; Rafeq ; Brown ; Batatu ; Crecelius
; Khoury ; Fawaz ; Van Leeuwen . Abou-el-Haj . E.g., Barbir ; Schilcher ; Toledano , , b; Farah ; Akarlı ; Doumani ; Ze’evi ; Khoury ; Hathaway ; Shuval , a; Makdisi ; Reilly ; Hanssen ; Agmon . Toledano : –; but see Hathaway and Barbir . Some of the best-known works on this are Raymond –; Hanna , ; Winter ; see also Sajdi . Cuno ; Hilal . Notes to contain only a sample of the works published on the various topics mentioned in this paragraph.
— Ehud R. Toledano —
A pioneering work here is Tucker ; see also Tucker ; a recent contribution is Zilfi . Toledano , and other books by the same author; Zilfi . Fortna ; Duben and Behar ; Singer a; Pollard ; Reimer ; Hanssen et al. ; Raymond ; Chalcraft ; Van Leeuwen ; Marcus ; Meriwether ; and, most recently, Wilkins . Hopper . Ener ; Singer ; Shefer-Mossensohn . Toledano ; Ze’evi . Fawaz ; Messick ; Hanssen ; Zilfi . E.g., the Ottoman Yazbak ; court system, Cohen ; see Miller Peirce ; ; for Doumani controversy, ; see Ze’evi Zilfi ; ;Agmon Ghazzal. ;On on Ottoman law, see Gerber . E.g. Bakhit ; Rafeq ; Shaw a; Singer ; Winter ; and, with reservations, Behrens-Abouseif . Heyd ; Cohen and Lewis ; Toledano ; Cohen , . İnalcık . Shaw b. On Egypt, see Toledano b. The best general surveys remain Lewis ; Davison ; Anderson (for ‘the Eastern Question’); more recent work includes Yerasimos ; Georgeon ; Findley , . E.g., İslamoğlu-İnan and Keyder ; Owen ; Kunt ; Kafadar –; Faroqhi , ; Abou-el-Haj [] ; Murphey ; Özel . Owen : –. On this aspect of revision, see works cited in note above. Salzmann , and her essay, chapter , in this volume. E.g., İnalcık ; Hess ; Rafeq .
Khoury Murphey: :–. ; Ágoston . Murphey : , –, (all for transport aspects), – (for the siege itself). Toledano . Hathaway : –. On Ottoman-Egyptian kul of Georgian srcin, see Crecelius and Djaparidze ; Peradze , , (all in Georgian with English summaries); also Hathaway and Barbir : –; Hathaway . For specific examples, relating also to the following paragraphs, see works cited in notes – above. Toledano : –; : –; Ener . Barkey ; Ze’evi ; Rogan ; Abdullah . For tanzimat-inspired reforms in Ottoman Egypt, see Hunter ; for Egypt under the British, see Mitchell ; also Toledano ; Cole ; Fahmy ; Reimer . An older but still relevant study on the tanzimat in Syria is Ma’oz . For similar reforms in Tunisia, see Brown . On the tanzimat ‘nanny’ state, see Toledano : ch. . On the transition from imperial rule to Arab nationalism, still relevant is Dawn ; more recent studies include Khalidi ; Kayalı .
GLOSSARY
A selective list of Ottoman terms used in this volume. Definitions are general. More specific terms are defined in the essays in which they occur. Terms given in parentheses are alternative spellings. title of respect, for military men and palace personnel ağa ahdname (ahidname) pledge or covenant, granting privileges Ottoman silver coin akçe member of a military raiding or border force akıncı tribe aşiret general term for Ottoman officials, remunerated by the askeri
avarız ayan (a‘yan) berat bey beylerbeyi beylerbeyilik beylik bidat (bid‘at) celali cihad
state and tax exempt; lit. ‘military’, but use not confined to the army; counterpart to reaya in traditional descriptions of Ottoman government extraordinary levy for military purposes, which became a regular tax in the seventeenth century ‘local notable’; informal description for provincial elites, formalized as a title in the later eighteenth century document certifying appointment to office lord, military commander; title of respect lit. ‘ bey of beys’; governor-general of a province regional governorate; in later Ottoman empire known as eyalet or vilayet areaOttoman under control bey; term used to describe the early state of a innovation; in religious terms usually a negative, inappropriate development general term for rebel or bandit groups of armed men or mercenaries, mainly in Anatolia, from the mid-sixteenth century onwards struggle; holy war (cf. gaza)
— Glossary —
çift çiftlik cizye darülharb darülislam defter (daftar) devşirme
peasant farm; lit. ‘the area of land that a family with a yoke of oxen could cultivate within a year’ farm; sometimes a landholding of considerable size poll tax paid by Christians and Jews under Muslim rule ‘the abode of war’; formal term for lands outside Muslim rule or influence the Muslim world administrative register lit. ‘collection’; selective levy of youths from non-Muslim
communities tive service within the empire for military and administra‘living’; revenue assignment as salary for government (usually dirlik military) officials (i) council or council chamber; (ii) a poet’s collected verse divan the imperial council, and its building in Topkapı palace divan-i hümayun measure of land within a çift dönüm outsider, foreigner ecnebi administrative official, tax collector emin local rebel, outlaw eşkiya guilds esnaf eşraf descendants of the Prophet Muhammad pious foundations; pl. of evkaf vakıf see vilayet eyalet major imperial decree ferman formal written opinion on religious and legal matters by a fetva (fatwa) recognized expert border raid; holy war gaza one who carries out gazi gaza see kuruş guruş limit, border hadd (pl. hudud) governor hakim han caravansaray (i) domestic house or household; (ii) a grouping of households hane for tax purposes top-level revenue assignment (dirlik) for senior government has (hass) personnel robe of honour hil‘at divorce initiated by the wife hul
iltizam inşa ırgad kadi (kadı) kanun kanunname kapı
tax farming literary or chancery style of writing labourer şeriat court judge, with responsibility also for administering Ottoman kanun Ottoman administrative law legal code; collection of kanun relating to a particular area or subject lit. ‘door, gate’; large household of a prominent person
— Glossary —
kapıkulu
lit. ‘slaves of the gate’: the sultan’s household troops (pl. kapıkulları) scribe, secretary katib district under the jurisdiction of a kadi kaza kazasker (kadiasker) lit. ‘army judge’: one of two senior kadis just below the rank of şeyhülislam; member of the imperial council steward kethüda lit. ‘sword’: base element of a timar kılıç purse of money (used as a counting term) kise
kızılbaş
lit. ‘red-head’: term for Shiite or Safavid sympathizers, especially in Anatolia (i) slaves purchased, captured or levied through the devşirme, kul for military, administrative and household service for the sultan; (ii) more generally, a servitor of the sultan or of a leading Ottoman military-administrative official kuruş Ottoman coin (piastre) mercenary soldier, usually of peasant srcin levend life-long tax farm, as if in ownership malikane (i) local advisory council; (ii) social gathering meclis college of Islamic law and theology medrese Muslim elementary school mekteb teacher in a college of law and theology müderris legal expert who gives fetvas müfti (müftü) mühimme defterleri ‘registers of important events’ market inspector muhtesib revenue contract or unit mukataa tax farmer mültezim tax collector mütesellim mütevelli vakıf administrator official head of the descendants of the Prophet nakibüleşraf official market price narh head of the Ottoman central chancery nişancı ‘the New Order’: a reform programme initiated by Selim III nizam-ı cedid (–) unit of the Janissary corps ocak tithe öşr emperor padişah small (wooden) fort palanka
qadi (re‘aya) reaya Rumeli sabil-kuttab sancak sancakbeyi sekban (segban) şeriat
see kadi subjects (see askeri) tax-paying the Ottoman name for the ex-Byzantine Balkans a large fountain/water-distribution centre with an elementary school built above provincial district, part of a beylerbeyilik or eyalet/vilayet district governor mercenary soldier sharia; Islamic law
— Glossary —
şeyh şeyhülislam seyyid sicil (sicill) sipahi suhte (softa) sürgün
(i) spiritual leader; (ii) head of a dervish order; (iii) tribal leader the Ottoman chief jurisconsult and head of the judicial hierachy descendant of the Prophet Muhammad kadi court register cavalryman student at a theological college resettlement of population ordered by government, usually for
economic or military purposes survey of population and resources for tax purposes unilateral male-initiated divorce ‘reordering’: the mid-nineteenth-century reform programme peasant title to land; also the fee payable to acquire this dervish lodge summary document translation lowest-level revenue assignment ( dirlik), srcinally granted to provincial sipahis timarlı timar-holding border area uc senior Islamic religious and legal scholars ulema (ulama) military commanders and senior provincial governors ümera endowment deed for a vakfiye vakıf pious foundation vakıf (waqf) governor of a vali vilayet province governed by a vilayet vali; term used instead of beylerbeyilik in the later empire (i) tax collection agent; (ii) the princes of Wallachia and voyvoda Moldavia Janissary yeniçeri alms zakat dervish convent zaviye (zawia) zeamet middle-level revenue assignment in dirlik system a Christian or Jew living under Muslim rule zimmi
tahrir talak tanzimat tapu tekke telhis tercüme timar
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INDEX
Abdülhamid II 82 Abdurrahman Şeref, historian 125 Adana 15, 19, 20, 78, 221 Adrianople 26, 37; see also Edirne Aegean region 26, 31–2; ecclesiastical and communal courts in 350–9 ahdname 132, 215, 221, 242, 277, 355, 360 n.51 Ahmad Khani 237, 246–8
Amasya 33, 35, 36, 93, 193, 194; imarets in 74, 76, 77 Amsterdam, Ottoman merchants in 276–86 Ankara 20, 91–2, 193, 254; battle of (1402) 187, 371 Arab provinces 187, 453–65; passim Arab tribes 11, 12, 187 Arabic language, influence upon Ottoman 143ff., 155
Ahmed Ahmed III 122, 176,123 123 Ahmed III 114, 309, 379, 383, 397, 398, 402, 405 n.106 Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, historian 179 Ahmed Paşa, Cezzar 176, 179–80, 439, 441, 444, 452 n.33 Ahmed Paşa, Hersekzade 50, 51 Ahmed Paşa, Melek 70 n.8, 154, 162, 240, 246, 247, 248 akçe, 104; devaluation of 35, 185, 424; in land taxes 42–7, 49; passim Albania 20, 37, 147, 294, 437, 437, 450; imarets in 77 Aleppo 103, 105, 175, 190, 191, 254, 292, 294–5, 393, 395, 395;households in 291–304; life-long leases in 417–19; population of 300 Alevi communities 13, 22, 87, 88, 91, 442 Alexander the Great, legend of 134–6, 151, 161 Algiers 6, 147, 206; Ottoman province of Algeria 264–74 Ali Biçnin, corsair leader 269–70 Ali Paşa, Canbulatoğlu 175, 190 Ali Paşa, Kadızade, governor of Budin 233–4 Ali Paşa, Tepedelenli 436, 437–8, 441ff., 446, 448 Ali Ufki 140 Amasra 33
Armenians 63, 65, 162, 384, 446; merchants20, in 61, Amsterdam 276,241, 279–83; Alexander and Isaie di Masse 280–2 artisans 62, 66, 68; in Cairo, 323ff.; in Istanbul 307–17, 335–6, 383 Aşıkpaşazade, Ottoman historian 31, 34, 76, 88, 92, 252 askeri 57, 64, 65, 166, 188–9, 193–4, 291, 304 n.3, 309, 417 ‘assistance’ levies 427–9 avarız 188, 195–6, 414, 425–7; avarızhane 426– 7; registers, 193ff., 201 n.73 ayan 5, 19, 59, 66, 68, 178, 181–2, 197, 359, 412, 417, 428, 429, 438; households of, in Aleppo 291–304; office of, 444–5 Aydın 190; 1528 kanunname 45 Aydınoğulları 37, 89, 107 Ayntab (Gaziantep) 58, 190, 193, 254, 412 Aziz Efendi, treatise writer 239, 241, 242–3 al-Azm family, in Damascus 180, 439, 441, 461 Baalbek 172, 173, 175, 176, 180 Babai revolt 88, 187 Baghdad 20, 21, 58, 86, 153, 161, 175, 208, 226, 238, 245, 390, 415, 459 Başkent, battle of 31 Basra 21, 226, 411 Bayezid I 36, 38, 76, 77, 89, 187
— Index — Bayezid II 29, 31, 36, 41–2, 48, 77; and sufis 92–4 Bedouin tribes 11, 12, 19, 172, 342, 463 Bekaa Valley 172–5, 179 Bektaşi (Bektashi) order of dervishes 62, 66, 68, 78, 88, 93–4, 109, 171, 449 Belen (Bakras) 78, 79 Belgrade 46, 58, 74, 151, 206, 229, 390 berat, documents of appointment 65–6, 214, 216, 221, 287 n.35; of metropolitans and patriarchs 65, 349–51 Bitlis 216, 239–44, 259 Black Death 251–3 Black Sea region 31, 33, 38, 105, 260, 438 Bolu 1528 kanunname 43 Bosna Saray (Sarajevo), 148 156 n.17 Bosnia (Bosna) 36, 44, 106, 156 n.17, 216, 223, 233, 371 Bosphorus 31, 387, 394, 396 Braudel, Fernand 2, 3, 14, 16 brigandage 66, 187, 215; Catalan 25–6; see also celali
Brocquière, Bertrandon de, traveller 81 Buda (Budin) 220, 223, 226, 231, 233; governors of 225–6, 233 Bulgaria, imarets in 77 Bursa 14, 25, 28–30, 32–3, 35, 36, 38, 41, 58, 88–9, 92, 103, 252–3, 254–5, 379, 390, 395, 403 n.39; and celalis 193; guilds in, 307–8; imarets in 74, 76–7; population of 262 n.12 Buşatlı family, Albania 437, 441, 442 Busbecq, Habsburg envoy 258 Cabbaroğlu 436–7; see also Capanoğlu Caffa 31, 33, 105 Cairo 37, 90, 103, 147, 259, 319ff., 390, 395, 412, 464; passim Çaldıran, battle of (1514) 238, 242 Çandarlı family 77 Canikli family, Anatolia 438, 441, 442, 447 Capanoğlu 441, 443, 447, 448, 449 Catalan companies 25–6 celali 4, 14, 41, 47, 171, 175, 184–98, 199 n.1, 463 Celalzade, nişancı 45–6, 50, 51, 131–2, 135 Çemişgezek 1541 kanunname 51 Cezayir-i garb302, (Ottoman Algeria),ofsee297, Algiers children 83, 373; adoption 304; kidnapping of 300; sale of 361 n.66 Chios (Kos) 339, 353, 355 Christian communities 5, 13, 46–7, 57, 60ff., 65, 69, 160, 163, 168, 206, 241, 411; communal courts 69, 347–8, 353–9; ecclesiastical courts 347–53, 355–9; and imarets 80–1; and Ottoman courts 370; see also women
çift 16, 41, 42–54, 187; çift-hane 14, 425 çiftlik 187, 194, 196, 412, 431–3 cihad, ideology of 206–7, 212; see also gazi cizye 166, 188, 193, 206, 231, 241, 414, 425
climate 186, 189, 194, 201 n.96, 202 n.124, 411–12, 419 clothing 338, 401 coffeehouses 324, 326–7, 382–5, 403 n.39 communal courts, non-Muslim 69, 347–8, 353–9 condominium, in Hungary 230–32; in Kurdistan 239–44 Constantinople 26, 32, 33; fall of, 27, 30, 31, 105, 251; see also Istanbul copper mines 35–6, 105 corsairs 264ff., 268–9; in the Aegean 355 Crete 32, 113–14, 181, 191, 215, 259, 295, 351, 419 Crimea 31, 58, 105, 211, 216, 260 Damascus 105, 174, 180, 386, 389, 393, 395, 412; imarets in 74, 77, 78, 80–1; see also al-Azm Dardanelles 15, 25, 32, 252, 447 Deed of Alliance (Sened-i ittifak) 437, 449–50 dervish orders: Bayrami 91, 92, 93, 95; Halveti 91, 92, 93, 95; Hurufi 90; Kadiri 81, 95, 248; Vefai 87–8, 93; Zeyni 88, 91, 92, 93; see also Bektaşi, Mevlevi, Nakşibendi, sufism devşirme 93, 105–6, 107, 111, 112, 149, 157 n.26, 162, 166–7, 185, 196, 299 dirlik 103–4, 110, 185–6, 200 n.49; see also timar divan, imperial 59–60, 267, 436–7; ceremonial
in 336–7; provincial 59–60, 68–9, 271–2 divorce, see marriage and divorce Diyarbekir 19, 42, 46–7, 58, 239, 240, 242ff., 260, 411, 416–17 dower (mehr) 62, 63, 363, 366, 372, 373 Druze emirs, in Lebanon 172ff. Dubrovnik, see Ragusa Dutch merchants 277ff.; De Vogel, Thomas 281–3 eating places, in Istanbul 389–90 şeyhülislam 49, 53, 54, 109; Ebussuud Efendi, and kızılbaş 171, 173, 176, 181; and marriage contracts 329; and slaves 302; and sufis 95–6 ecclesiastical courts, in Greece 348–53, 355–9 economy, early Ottoman attitudes to 25–40; in Istanbul 308–11; nomadic 15–16 Edirne 32, 33, 36, 58, 66, 172, 176, 181, 254–5, 394, 395; imarets in 74, 75, 77, 78, 92; see also Adrianople
— Index — Eger (Eğri), province of 223, 230, 231, 234; 1596 campaign 121, 122, 125 Egypt 4, 32, 38, 73, 90, 105, 113, 179, 420, 439; passim Eremya Çelebi 162, 163, 297 Erzurum 190, 193, 208, 221 esnaf, see guilds Esperanza Malchi 164–5 Eşrefoğlu Rumi, historian 91 ethnicity 159–68, 245–6; of slaves, 300 eunuchs 111, 113, 162, 165, 176
Haseki Hurrem Sultan, imaret in Jerusalem 75, 78 Hayreddin Barbarossa 264, 265–6, 267, 273 Hayrullah, historian 125–6 Hemvend, Kurdish tribe 20–1 Hezarfen Hüseyin, writer 124 Homs 173–4 households (kapı), elite 104–5, 113, 271, 273, 291–2, 309; imperial 103–14, 415; in Aleppo 291–304; in the Arab provinces 458ff., 460–1; of an Ottoman
evkaf, see vakıf
prince 108, 110–11; provincial, 415, 441; ulema 111–12 Hüdavendigar 1487 kanunname 41ff.; 433 hükümet, in Kurdistan 240ff. hul (female-initiated divorce) 63, 365–6, 372 Hungarian–Ottoman border 221, 227–8 Hungaro-Ottoman condominium 230–2 Hungary, Ottoman province of 208–9, 216, 220–35; fortresses in 227–30; History of 134–6; imarets in 77; Ottoman campaigns in 118–23, 134, 188, 189, 191, 220, 226
Evliya Çelebi, traveller 82, 147, 153–4, 193, 216, 382, 387; in Kurdistan 237, 239–40, 241, 243–4, 245–8; on gardens 395 Evrenos Bey 77, 82 Eyüb 73, 74, 379; shops in 313, 314 fetva 95, 176, 326, 428; re divorce 367, 369,
371–3; see also Ebussuud Filibe 34, 39 n.37, 58 Galata, shops in 313–14, 382, 383 Gallipoli 25–6, 27, 31, 38, 256, 433 gardens, in Istanbul 394–7 garrisons, in Hungary 227–30; in Algiers 274 n.2 gazi 34, 76, 89, 94, 206, 216; and gaza 212, 239–40 Gelibolu, see Gallipoli Genoese traders 31–2, 38, 105, 277 Georgia 58, 207, 239; slaves from 113, 300, 466 n.34 Greece, imarets in 77 Greek merchants, in Amsterdam 276, 279–80; Stati Thoma, merchant 283; Ottoman diplomacy 284–6 guilds, of craftsmen 66, 68, 293, 307–17, 327–8 gunpowder works 230 Habsburgs, and Hungary 205–7, 208–9, 220ff.; and North Africa 265, 266 Hacı Bayram 91–2 Hacı Bektaş 93 Haçova, battle of (1596) 121, 189 Hakkari 240, 242, 243
Ibn Arabi 89, 96 Ibn Battuta, traveller 32, 88 Ibrahim Paşa, of Egypt 180 ihtisab (see market regulations) 27–8, 29 iltizam 174, 358, 425; see also tax farming imaret 72–85; architecture of, 76–8; and sufis 74, 76 Iran 4, 13, 32, 90, 174, 238ff.; Ottoman campaigns against 117–19, 122–4, 135, 188, 208, 242; passim Iraq 12, 19, 21, 42, 87, 90, 238 Işkodra 20, 147 Ismail Ağa, of Rusçuk/Ruse 438, 441, 447, 449 Ismail Bey, of Serres 438, 441, 442, 446 Istanbul 1, 3, 33, 37–8, 48, 58, 92, 133, 386; artisan guilds 307–17; imarets in 74, 76, 77, 80–1; military revolt in 185; and plague 255ff.; population of 255, 256, 310, 391; public spaces in 382–402; see also Constantinople; passim istimalet 13, 81 Izmir (Smyrna) 14, 20, 58, 105, 175, 280, 281–2, 284, 286
Hamada emirs, of Lebanon 172, 175–6, 178ff. hamam 66, 386–8 Hamidiye regiment 21–2 Hanafi law 363, 367, 371–3, 376 n.63; see also Ebussuud Harfush emirs, of Lebanon 172ff. Hasan Beyzade, historian 145 Hasan Kafi al-Akhisari 121 Hasan Paşa, Abaza 191, 193 Hasankeyf 240, 242
Iznik (Nicaea) 74, 76–7, 88, 89, 259 Jabal ‘Amil 172–3, 174, 176, 179 Jalili family, in Mosul 250 n.26, 461 Janissaries 19, 65, 66, 68, 78, 110, 113, 116, 120, 124, 189, 190, 195–6, 198, 335–6, 414–15, 420; and Bektashis 93–4; and coffeehouses 383–4, 403 n.15; and nizam-ı cedid 449; in Algiers 264ff.; in Damascus 174; in Hungary 227, 229, 234; in
— Index — Van 241, 243; recruitment of 107, 268, 273; payment of 185, 199 n.13 Jerusalem 15, 58; Haseki Hurrem Sultan, imaret of 75, 78, 80, 81, 83; Fatih imaret 83 Jews 57, 60ff., 65, 69, 81, 160, 163, 164–5, 341, 393, 404 n.74
land code (1858) 20, 42, 434 language use 109, 143–56, 311, 334; in Hungary 233; in Kurdistan 246–7; see also Arabic, Ottoman, Persian, Turkish language Lebanon, see Mount Lebanon
kadi 13, 29, 30, 48, 49, 81, 95, 111, 120, 150,
181, 224, 231, 232, 233, 249, 414, 427, 428, 429–30, 433; and artisans 66, 68, 293, 311–12, 327–30; and marriages 351, 366ff.; kadi courts 57–69, 149, 163–4, 294; and nonMuslims 347–59; court records, see sicil
Kadızadeli movement 97, 109, 378–80, 382–3 Kağıdhane 395 Kamieniec 206, 209 Kanije 223, 229, 230, 233–4 kanun 28, 60, 68, 351 kanunname 29, 34, 41–54, 208, 225; and Roman law 54 kapı, see household kapıkulu (pl. kapıkulları) 35, 185–6, 195–6; see also kul kapudan paşa (grand admiral) 265–6, 272; province of 354–5 Karaman 33, 45, 186, 190, 194, 252 Karaosmanoğlu 436–7, 438, 441, 444, 447, 449 Karayazıcı, celali leader 190 Karesi 252 Karlowitz, treaty of (1699) 3, 114, 191, 206–7, 211 Kastamonu 35, 74, 105 katib 67, 343–4 Katib (Katip) Çelebi 124, 140, 153, 193 Kayseri 58, 186, 190, 191, 193, 252, 254, 363 kazasker 112 Kazdağlı (Qazduğli) household, in Egypt 321, 461, 462, 465 Kemalpaşazade, Ottoman historian 31, 36, 95, 96 Kerkük 20 Kınalızade Ali 166 kızılbaş 87, 88, 93, 94, 171–82; and celalis 186, 187, 199 n.1; in Kurdistan 238, 248 Knights of Malta 269, 354, 355 Koçu Bey 124, 145 Konya 81, 108,Fuad 193, 254 Köprülü,20,Mehmed 87, 93, 151 Köprülü vezirs 17, 42, 127; see also Mehmed Paşa, Köprülü Kosovo, battle of (1389) 33, 36 Kratova 36 kul 105–6ff., 185, 195–6; training of 107; and language 149; see also kapıkulu Kurdish tribes 12, 13, 19, 20, 21–2, 161, 162, 187, 215, 238ff., 243, 245–6
Kurdistan 161, 215, 237–48 Kurds 87, 215, 240, 243, 245–6 Küre, copper mines 35–6 Kütahya 1528 kanunname 44 kuttab, elementary schools, in Cairo 320–4
levend, see mercenaries, sekban
Libya 19, 20 life-long leases (see malikane mukataa) 18, 417–19 Limnos 2, 250, 350 literacy 147, 150; definitions of 321, 323, 325–6; and Cairo artisans 319–30; and legal documents 327–30, 358; and sufism 324–6 ‘local-Ottoman’ elites, 460ff. Macedonia 36, 147, 438 Mahmud I 335–7, 343 Mahmud II 409, 420, 436–7, 449 Mahmud Bey, translator 130, 134–6, 140 malikane mukataa 415–16, 424, 444, 448, 458; abolition of 450; see also mukataa, tax farming mamluk 4, 105, 172, 324, 456, 461 Ma‘n emirs, of Lebanon 172, 173, 178, 215 Manastır (Bitola) 431–3 Manisa 58, 190, 438; imarets in 74, 77 manufacturing 15; see guilds Marcella, Nicolas, Ottoman consul 285–6 Mardin 12 market regulations 28–30, 62, 67, 307; see also ihtisab
Marmara region 25–6, 31, 37, 252 Maronite Christians 179, 180, 181 marriage and divorce 62–3, 163, 292, 362–75; see also women Mecca 4, 74, 205–6 Mediterranean, eastern region 2, 11, 31–2, 38, 264; plague in 252ff.; trade in 277–8 medrese 58, 88, 89, 147; teachers and students in 112, 120, 188 Mehmed I 77 Mehmed II 27, 31, 32–4, 38,80, 41,in 90, 105, 160, 255;28, imaret of, in 35–7, Istanbul Jerusalem 83 Mehmed III 120–6, 132, 251 Mehmed IV 114, 122, 123, 154, 212, 401 Mehmed V 82 Mehmed Ali Paşa, in Egypt 319–20, 409, 420, 436, 439, 441ff., 448, 465 Mehmed Paşa, Abaza 190–1, 200 n.61 Mehmed Paşa, Köprülü 270–1
— Index — Mehmed Paşa, Piri 58 Mehmed Paşa, Sokollu 78, 109, 216, 225, 234 Menemen 34 Menteşe 32, 37 mercenaries 188, 197, 199; see also sekban Mevlevi, sufi order 93, 95, 109, 378, 382, 384–5 military organization, later developments 459– 60; local, 66; nomads 16; see also Janissaries, sipahi millet 347, 348
mints 36 missionaries, Christian 333ff., 411 Mizancı Murad, historian 125–6 Mohács (Mohaç), battle of (1526) 220 Moldavia 206, 208, 210, 216, 260, 263 n.32 Morea 1716 kanunname 43–4 Mosul 19, 20, 21, 42, 46–7, 154, 238–9, 240, 242, 243–4, 247, 250 n.26 Mount Athos 350 Mount Lebanon 172ff., 177 mufti (şeyhülislam) 43, 48, 49–50, 52, 95, 174, 249, 371, 382–3, 428; see also Ebussuud mühimme defterleri 59, 99 n.40, 173, 175, 193, 260 mukataa 172, 178–9, 195; in Hungary, 234 Muntaner, Ramon 25–6 Murad I 32, 36, 76 Murad II 31, 32, 37, 77, 78, 92, 105; in literature 138–9 Murad III 3, 116, 117ff., 145, 266 Murad IV 13, 122–4, 161, 175, 191, 243, 248, 403 n.39 Murad Bey, translator 130, 136–9, 140 Murteza Paşa 230 Mustafa II 113, 122, 124, 379 Mustafa III 312, 386–7, 402 Mustafa IV 447, 449 Mustafa Ali, historian 78, 80, 83, 108, 112, 117ff., 145, 153–4; on allegiance 294; on plague 256 Mustafa Paşa, Alemdar 438, 446, 447, 448, 449–50 Mustafa Paşa, Kara 205 Mustafa Paşa, Sokollu 156 n.24, 225–6, 234
New Order, see nizam-ı cedid nişancı 45, 52 nizam, guild regulations 312–15, 317 nizam-ı cedid 7, 379, 447, 449 nomads 6, 11–24, 28, 65, 76, 93, 243; and celalis 194, 196, 198, 201 n.91; in Algeria 265; re-nomadization 194; settlement of 15, 17–21, 33, 34–5, 187, 412–13; see also tribes North Africa, Ottoman provinces in: see Algiers, Tripoli in Libya, Tunis Ohrid 147, 153 Orhan 32, 76–7, 252 Orthodox church 347ff. Osman I 87, 105 Osman II 122–4, 190, 208, 215 Osmanlı 6, 108–9, 151 Ottoman–Arab history, writing of 455–6, 457–9 Ottoman–Habsburg war 1593–1606, 185, 188, 189, 230, 231, 232, 233; see also Eger, Haçova Ottoman language 108, 143–56, 344, 460; translation into 131–40; Arabic and Persian influences on 131–2, 143ff., 152; see also Turkish language ‘Ottoman-local’ elites 150, 460ff. Ottoman poetry 132, 144, 147, 151ff.; and sufism 153 Ottoman–Safavid border 237–8ff., 243; passim patronage, see households Pasha Yight 34 Pazvantog˘lu, Osman, of Vidin 438, 441, 443, 444, 446; revolts of 448–9 peasantry 13, 15, 19, 28, 161, 165–6, 411; in Hungary 231; and celalis 184ff., 196–7; see also reaya Peçevi, historian 126 Persian language, influence on Ottoman 143ff., 155 plague 251–62, 412 Podolia 209, 211–12 Poland–Lithuania 207, 209–12, 215–17 population: census 433–4; depopulation 191, 193–4; growth 186–7, 253–5; of
Nabi, poet 154, 383 al-Nabulusi, 403 n.15 Abd al-Ghani 379, 382, 397, 398, Naima, historian 119 Nakşibendi, sufi order 91, 92, 93, 248, 378, 384, 401–2, 449 Napoleon Bonaparte, invasion of Egypt (1798) 7, 179, 285 Naxos 353, 355 Nedim, poet 152, 383, 399–400 Nergisi, kadi and writer 152, 383
Hungary 232–3; of Istanbul 255, 256, 310, 391 Promontorio, Jacopo da 31–2, 36 prostitution 58, 388, 389, 392–3, 404 n.52 provincial power-holders (c.1800) 436–51 provisionism 413 public spaces 380–1; see also coffeehouses, gardens Ragusa (Dubrovnik) 207, 256; merchants 234
— Index — reaya 165–8, 186, 196, 291, 304 n.3, 309; see
sipahi, household regiment 109, 113, 120, 185, 195–6; timar-holding 41, 66, 103,
also peasantry Rhodes 259, 339, 354, 355 Romania, imarets in 77 Rum, province of 193, 194, 195 Ruse (Rusçuk) 438, 442 Russia 211–12; slaves from 300
185–6, 189, 195, 199 n.13, 200 n.49; in Hungary 224, 228, 230, 234–5 Sivas 20, 190, 254 Skopje (see Üsküb) 74 slaves, domestic 63–4, 291–2, 299–303; manumission of 302–3, 304; trade in 299–300 Sofia 43–6, 57–69 Spandugnino, historian 81
Safavids 4, 86–7, 90, 93–4, 155, 161, 171ff., 207, 237ff.; passim Safi, historian 122, 123 Şah Kulu revolt 94 Şahname (Shahnama), Persian epic 107–8, 135 Salonica (Thessalonika) 26, 31, 33, 74, 103, 105, 433; plague in 261, 263 n.32 Şam, see Damascus, Syria sancak, in Hungary 221, 223–4; in Kurdistan 241, 243 sancak beyi 13, 171, 173, 221, 224, 232, 355; income of 103, 224, 429 Saruhan 17, 31, 34 Schiltberger, Johann, traveller 81 Şehrizor 175, 208, 242, 243, 245 sekban (segban) 188, 189–91, 195, 195, 197, 242, 428; see also mercenaries Selaniki, historian 118, 145, 251 Selim I 35, 41, 78, 94, 105, 186; campaigns of 118–19, 172, 237 Selim II 108, 112, 116, 153, 186 Selim III 7, 73, 378, 392, 393, 401, 402, 438, 447–8 Seljuks 31, 76, 78, 86–7, 88, 108–9, 155 Serbia 36–7, 149, 233, 429 Serez (Serres) 36, 39 n. 33, 163 şeriat 57ff., 163 servants 292, 293–7; self-rental agreements 293–6 Şeyh Bedreddin 89–90, 91 şeyhülislam, see mufti, Ebussuud Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi 237, 239, 241, 242 Sharafnama 239, 241, 246, 248 sharia, see şeriat Shihabi emirs, of Lebanon 178–9 shiism (shi‘ism) 86; in Syria, 171ff., 238 sicil, kadi court registers 58ff., 193, 196, 381; re servants 292–3, 295–6, 311–12, 316–17; re
subaşı 29, 173, 295
slavery Sidon 172,299–300; 176, 179women in 363ff. Silahdar, historian 122 Silistre 34–5, 45–6 silver mines 36–7, 65, 105 Simeon of Poland, traveller 193 Sinan (chief architect) 69 n.5, 76, 77, 133–4, 154 Sinan Paşa, Koca 120–1 Sinope 33
443; in Algeria Hungary 223–5; Kurdistan 241, 267; 242, in 245–6; see also dirlikin Topkapı Palace 82, 107; palace school 107– 8, 109–11, 112–13; reception of ambassador 336–7 Trabzon 33, 74, 252, 260, 438 trade 2, 32–3, 37–8, 277–9, 410–11; and plague 253ff. translators 67, 130–40, 356; see Mahmud Bey, Mehmed Bey, Yunus Bey
sufism 86–97, and Kadızadeli movement 97, 378–80; and literacy 324–6; in Kurdistan 246–7; see also dervish orders Şükri, historian 162 Süleyman I 41, 78, 83, 132, 135–6, 223; campaigns of 118–19, 220, 226; Süleymaniye complex 77, 80, 81–2, 155 sunnism 86ff., 95, 171, 207, 238 sürgün (population transfer) 27, 33–5, 39 n.29, 39 n. 37; to Istanbul 255 Syria (Şam) 4, 12, 15, 18, 19, 38, 42, 90, 105, 439; celalis in 184; imarets in 78, 84; shiism in 172–82; tribes in 194; passim Szapolyai, Janos 220 Tabriz 73, 145, 171, 259 tahrir (land registration) 27, 28, 75, 186, 193, 223, 426, 433; in Hungary 224–5; in Kurdistan 240–1 Talikizade, historian 122 tanzimat, 19th-century reform movement 19, 42, 420, 423, 433–4, 450, 463, 466 n.38 tapu 43–5, 48–53 Taşköprüzade, scholar 88 taxation 62, 66, 165, 188, 423–34; on nomads 13, 18, 20; see also tax farming, tevzi tax farming 41, 162, 195, 415–19, 425, 463; in Greece 351; in Hungary 234; in Mount Lebanon 172ff.; see also iltizam and mukataa Temeşvar 221, 223, 225, 226 tevzi (tax apportionment) 427, 429–31, 445 Thrace 25, 36 timar 5, 26, 41, 64, 66, 185, 301, 456; dissolution of system 189, 191, 195, 411, 431,
— Index — Transylvania 207, 216, 210, 220–1, 222, 234, 260; population of 232 travel writing, European 332–3 tribes 11–22, 240–8; see also Arab, Bedouin, Kurdish tribes, nomads, Türkmen Tripoli in Libya 206, 266, 419, 420, 462, 465 Tripoli in Syria 172, 175, 176, 178, 180 Tunis 206, 266, 267, 419, 420, 465 Turkish language 108, 143ff., speakers of 147– 8, 162; see also Ottoman language Türkmen (Turcoman) tribes 11, 12, 33, 34, 93,
Venice 2, 31–2, 38, 133, 207, 212, 216, 256, 269, 277, 281 ‘vernacular government’ 416–19 Veysi, kadi and writer 122, 123, 383 Vidin 64, 438, 447–8 Vize 47–8 Wahhabism 19, 421 n.8 Wallachia 206, 210, 222, 263 n.32 waqf see vakıf Wheler, George, traveller 81
147, 187, 190–1, 194, 239
Wittek, 206–7, 238,387–8 239 ff., 397–402, women Paul 362–75, 380–1, 463; and divorce 365–6; as slaves 301–2; as slave-owners 301; deserted wives 369–74; education of 323–4; inheritance by 51–3, 364; prostitutes 58, 392–3 world-systems analysis 410–13
Ukraine 211–12 ulema 7, 70 n.21, 88, 89, 92, 96, 120, 379–80; households of 111–12, 301, 461; in Hungary, 233; as tax farmers 417–19 urbanization, see population growth Urfa 154, 254 Üsküb (Skopje) 33–4, 36 Üsküdar 32; shops in, 313, 383, 390, 391, 395 Uyvar 208–9, 216, 223–5, 229–30 vakıf (pl. evkaf) 64–5, 69 n.5, 72–85, 213, 226,
255, 328, 418, 441; documents relating to 59, 70 n.13, 71 n.37, 74–5, 193, 195, 321 vali (governor), of Sofia 57, 60, 68–9 Van 208, 239, 240, 242ff., 259 Varad 216, 223ff. Varna 31
Yeğen Osman, celali leader 191 Yemen, 6 20, 173, 208, 213–17, 382 Yeni İl 1583 kanunname 48 Yezidis 240, 246, 247–8 Young Turk revolution 82 Yugoslavia, imarets in 77 Yunus Bey, translator 130, 132–4, 140 zaviye (zawia) 74, 76, 77–8, 88–9; in
Cairo 324–6; in Greece 77 zimmi 106, 347; courts 348ff.
