The Ottoman World

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T H E O T T O M A N W O R L D

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. Forover years, until its disintegration during the First World War, it encompassed adiverse range of ethnic, religious and linguistic communities with varying political andcultural backgrounds.

Yet was there such a thing as an ‘Ottoman world’ beyond the principle of sul-tanic rule from Istanbul? Ottoman authority might have been established largely bymilitary conquest, but how was it maintained for so long, over such distances and somany 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 ordinarypeople, to be part of an ‘Ottoman world’?

Arranged in five thematic sections, with contributions from thirty of the world’sleading specialists, The Ottoman World addresses these questions, examining aspectsof the social and socio-ideological composition of this major pre-modern empire,and offers a combination of broad synthesis and detailed investigation that is bothinformative and intended to raise points for future debate. The Ottoman World provides a unique coverage of the Ottoman empire, widening its scope beyond Istan-bul 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.


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THE ROUTLEDGE WORLDS

THE ELIZABETHAN WORLDEdited by Susan Doran and Norman Jones

THE BYZANTINE WORLDEdited by Paul Stephenson

THE VIKING WORLDEdited by Stefan Brink in collaboration with Neil Price

THE BABYLONIAN WORLDEdited by Gwendolyn Leick

THE ISLAMIC WORLDEdited by Andrew Rippin

THE EGYPTIAN WORLDEdited by oby Wilkinson

THE WORLD OF THE AMERICAN WESTEdited by Gordon Morris Bakken

THE WORLD OF POMPEIIEdited by Pedar W. Foss and John J. Dobbins

THE RENAISSANCE WORLDEdited by John Jeffries Martin

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN WORLDEdited by Philip F. Esler

THE GREEK WORLDEdited by Anton Powell

THE ROMAN WORLDEdited by John Wacher

THE HINDU WORLDEdited by Sushil Mittal and Gene hursby

Forthcoming:

THE ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN WORLDEdited by Augustine Casiday

THE ATLANTIC WORLDEdited by William O’Reilly

THE VICTORIAN WORLDEdited by Martin Hewitt


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T H E O T T O M A N

W O R L D

Edited by

Christine Woodhead


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First published by Routledge

Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX RN

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Third Avenue, New York, NY Routledge is an imprint of the aylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© Christine Woodhead for selection and editorial matter; individualcontributions, the contributors.

The right of Christine Woodhead to be identified as the author of theeditorial 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

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rademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarksor 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 Proby Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon


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C O N T E N T S

List of illustrations viii

List of maps ix

List of tables ix

List of contributors

Preface xiv

Note on urkish and technicalities xvi

Introduction Christine Woodhead

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

A kadi court in the Balkans: Sofia in the seventeenth and earlyeighteenth centuries

Rossitsa Gradeva

Imaret s Amy Singer

Sufis in the age of state-building and confessionalization Derin erzioğlu


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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 imperialinterpreters 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 celali s c .– Oktay Özel

PART III : THE WIDER EMPIRE

Between universalistic claims and reality: Ottoman frontiers in theearly modern period

Dariusz Kołodziejczyk

Defending and administering the frontier: the case of Ottoman Hungary Gábor Ágoston

The Ottoman frontier in Kurdistan in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries

Nelida Fuccaro

Conquest, urbanization and plague networks in the Ottomanempire, –

Nükhet Varlık

The peripheralization of the Ottoman Algerian elite al Shuval

On the edges of an Ottoman world: non-Muslim Ottomanmerchants in Amsterdam

İsmail Hakkı Kadı

PART IV: ORDINARY PEOPLE

Masters, servants and slaves: household formation among the urbannotables of early Ottoman Aleppo

Charles L. Wilkins

— C o n t e n t s —


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Subject to the sultan’s approval: seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuryartisans 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 inOttoman 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

— C o n t e n t s —


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viii

I L L U S T R A T I O N S

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 celali s: 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


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ix

MAPS

Ottoman towns and cities in Anatolia and the Balkans xix The eastern and southern Ottoman world xx 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, –

TABLES

. Campaigns of Selim I . Campaigns of Süleyman . Campaigns after Mehmed III

. Decrease in the number of Ottoman soldiers in frontier forts in thevilayet 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,

— I l l u s t r a t i o n s —


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C O N T R I B U T O R S

Gábor Ágoston is Associate Professor at the Department of History, GeorgetownUniversity. His field of research includes Ottoman military and economic history andcomparative study of the Ottoman, Habsburg and Russian empires. He is the authorof 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 Istanbuland the Ottoman elite in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and she is cur-rently 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 bookis Artisans of empire: crafts and craftspeople under the sultans (). She is currentlyresearching the ways in which Istanbul’s inhabitants during the early modern agemade use of the natural resources at their disposal.

Nelida Fuccaro is Reader in the Modern History of the Middle East at the Schoolof Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is a specialist on frontiersocieties 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 inBulgaria and a member of the Institute of Balkan Studies, Sofia. She has publishedwidely on Ottoman legal, administrative and military institutions in the Balkans andon Muslim and non-Muslim communities. She is the author of Rumeli under theOttomans 15th–18th centuries: institutions and communities () and War and peacein Rumeli: 15th to beginning of 19th century ().

Nelly Hanna is Professor and Chair of the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizationsat the American University in Cairo. Her work focuses on social groups outside theestablishment, such as artisans, traders and merchants, with a special emphasis on the


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xi

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 . Heis the author of he Ottoman empire, 1300–1481 (); Ebu’s-su’ud: the Islamic legaltradition (); 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. HisPhD dissertation on the role of Ottoman merchants in Ottoman–Dutch trade is beingprepared for publication. He is currently researching relations between the Ottomanempire and South-East Asian countries during the nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies.

Hakan T. Karateke is Associate Professor of Ottoman and Turkish Culture, Languageand Literature at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations,University of Chicago. He is currently working on the social history of the OttomanTurkish 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, BilkentUniversity, Ankara. She is interested in Ottoman law and has published articles onland issues and zimmi –Muslim relations in the Ottoman empire. She is currentlyworking on a book on legal pluralism in the Ottoman empire.

Dariusz Kołodziejczyk is Professor of History at the University of Warsaw. He is theauthor of Ottoman–Polish diplomatic relations (), Te Ottoman survey register ofPodolia (), and Te Crimean Khanate and Poland–Lithuania: international diplo-macy on the European periphery ().

Tijana Krstić is Associate Professor at the Department of Medieval Studies, CentralEuropean University, Budapest. Her research focuses on cultural and religious historyof the early modern Ottoman and broader Mediterranean world. She is the author ofContested conversions to Islam: narratives of religious change in the early modern Ottomanempire ().

Metin Kunt is Professor of History at Sabancı University, Istanbul. Most recently heco-edited, with Tülay Artan and Jeroen Duindam, Royal courts in dynastic states andempires ().


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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 theauthor of Exploring Ottoman sovereignty: tradition, image and practice in the Ottomanimperial household, 1400–1800 ().

Oktay Özel is Assistant Professor at Bilkent University, Ankara. He studies social anddemographic changes in rural Anatolia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,and is currently engaged in research on Caucasian immigrants in the late Ottomanempire. He is the author of Dün Sancısı () and After the storm: the collapse of ruralorder in Anatolia (Amasya 1576–1643) (forthcoming).

Ariel Salzmann is Associate Professor at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Herexploration of the Mediterranean and West Asian past employs comparative analysisand interdisciplinary methodologies. Her book ocqueville in the Ottoman empire:rival paths to the modern state () interrogates accepted theories of political devel-

opment in light of empirical research on later Ottoman governance.

Jan Schmidt is Lecturer in Ottoman Studies at Leiden University. He is currentlyworking on an edition of the Istanbul correspondence of Rudolf Kraus (–);his latest publication is a catalogue of the Turkish manuscripts in the John RylandsUniversity Library in Manchester ().

Tal Shuval teaches in the Department of History, Philosophy and Judaic Sciences inthe Open University of Israel. He is currently researching the relations between Jewsand 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 currentresearch 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 BoğaziçiUniversity, Istanbul. She has published articles on aspects of Ottoman cultural, intel-lectual 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. Mostrecently, he co-edited Beyond dominant paradigms in Ottoman and Middle Eastern/ North African studies: a tribute to Rifa‘at Abou-el-Haj () and authored he secondOttoman empire: political and social transformation in the early modern world ().

Ehud R. Toledano holds the University Chair for Ottoman and Turkish Studies inthe Department of Middle East and African History at Tel Aviv University. His majorpublications include he Ottoman slave trade and its suppression, 1840–1890 (),State and society in mid-nineteenth-century Egypt (), Slavery and abolition in the


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Ottoman Middle East () and As if silent and absent: bonds of enslavement in theIslamic Middle East ().

Başak Tuğ is Assistant Professor of History at Istanbul Bilgi University. Her areas ofresearch are gender history and theory, Islamic law, and the social history of violenceand crime. Her PhD dissertation, ‘Politics of honor: the institutional and social fron-tiers of “illicit” sex in mid-eighteenth-century Ottoman Anatolia’ (), is currentlybeing prepared for publication.

Michael Ursinus is Professor of Islamic and Ottoman Studies at the University ofHeidelberg. He is currently researching demographic trends in the western Balkans onthe 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 complet-ing a book entitled Plague and empire in the early modern Mediterranean world: theOttoman experience, 1347–1600 and editing a collection of articles entitled Plague andcontagion in the Islamic Mediterranean.

Charles L. Wilkins is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern History at Wake ForestUniversity, North Carolina. His recent book Forging urban solidarities: Ottoman Aleppo, 1640–1700 () examines the effects of state-sponsored war-making on animportant Ottoman provincial city and administrative centre. He is currently workingon 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 HautesÉtudes (EPHE). His current research focuses on tribal society and provincial adminis-tration in northern Syria in the Ottoman period.

Christine Woodhead teaches Ottoman and Mediterranean history at the Universityof Durham. Her research and publications are on sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuryOttoman literary history and historiography. She is currently working on letter collec-

tions of members of the Ottoman ulema . Ali Yaycıoğlu is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. His research ison the transformation of the imperial system, provincial communities and regionalnotables in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Ottoman world.


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P R E F A C E

It has been a pleasure to edit this book, with regard both to its content and to itscontributors. In terms of content, the volume is testimony to the enormous and veryfruitful expansion of Ottomanist historical study in recent decades. To study Ottomanhistory as an undergraduate in the s was to enter a completely unfamiliar andchallenging world, exciting in its very difference. However, from today’s perspectiveit is clear that the books and articles available then were few in number, and that mostwriting 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 adynamic, ever-expanding subject area which now presents a wealth of sources, topicsand 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’sexistence, both in their own terms and in terms of ‘being Ottoman’. Within thesegeneral parameters, contributors were invited to write about what they found mostsignificant in their own subject areas. No attempt was made to provide a comprehen-sive coverage of topics, either chronologically or throughout the empire. Although

several essays begin with a brief consideration of the relevant historiography, eachdevelops according to its own priorities. The result is a stimulating variety of styles andapproaches typical of current Ottomanist historical research.

As befits its subject matter, this book also represents a collaborative project of trulyinternational dimensions. I am most grateful to all my colleagues, not simply for theirwillingness to contribute to this volume and for producing such informative andthought-provoking essays, but particularly for their patience and good humour in theface of the delays which are almost inevitable with such a large-scale project, and of thedemands 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 seriesby inviting me to edit it. I agreed to do so only after consultation with an infor-


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N O T E O N T U R K I S H A N D

T E C H N I C A L I T I E S

SPELLING

As far as possible, in the interests of simplicity, all Ottoman words and phrases havebeen spelled using the modern Turkish alphabet. A few exceptions occur in essaysdealing with the Ottoman Arab provinces. In such cases, a simplified Ottoman Arabictranscription is used.

The following is a general guide to the pronunciation of those consonants andvowels used in Turkish which either do not appear in the English alphabet or whichdiffer markedly from their English pronunciation. Vowels are usually pronouncedshort. The stress in Turkish is generally on the last syllable of the word.

c j as in jamç ch as in churchğ 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 shipa (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 cousini i as in pino o as in otter ö eu as in French jeuu u as in put ü u as in French tu

PLACE NAMES

Names of major cities and regions are usually given in their Anglicized form wherethese exist. Otherwise, place-name styles vary according to the region or era underdiscussion, with Ottoman and modern variants given where appropriate.


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DATES

All dates are given in (Common Era) reckoning. A double-year date such as –indicates often an original hicri date in the Muslim calendar which spanned these twoyears.

REFERENCES

References appear as Harvard-style endnotes at the end of each essay. Full biblio-graphic details are given in the composite bibliography at the end of the book. Thealphabetical order followed in the bibliography is that usually preferred in English-language publications and which ignores the extra subtleties of Turkish letters. Forthis cultural insensitivity, I apologise to Turkish-speaking readers.

— N o t e o n u r k i s h —


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R a g u s a

( D u b r o v n i k )

B

e l g r a d e

V i d i n

R u s e

V a r n a

I s t a n b u l

E d i m e

F i l i b e

Ü s k ü p

S a l o n i k a A

t h e n s

G

e l i b o l u

( G a l l i p o l i ) B

u r s a

B e r g a m a

I z m i r ( S m y r n a )

K ü t a h y a

A m a s r a

A n k a r a

A n t a l y a

K o n y a

A d a n a

Y o z g a t

S i n o p

S a m s u n

T o k a t

S i v a s

C a f f a

A k k e r m a n

T r a b z o n

S o f i a

M a n i s a

M o s t a r

S a r a j e v o

K a n i z s a

( K a n i j e )

Y a n y a

( I o a n n i n a )

E r z i n c a n

M a l a t y a

B i t l i s

D i y a r b e k i r

U r f a

A l e p p o

O h r i d

K a y s e r i

A y d ı n

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

B l a c k S e a

A d r i a t i c

S e a

A e g e a n

S e a

C R E T E

C Y P R U S

R H O D E S

K O S

( C H I O S )

M I D I L L I

L E M N O S

R . S

a v a

R . T i s z a

R . P

r u t h

R . B u g

R . T

i g r i s

R . Isker

R . Mo ra v

a

N i s

A k s e h i r

M a r a s

R .

D n i e

p e r

R . D

r a v a

R .

D a n u b e

R .

D a n u

b e

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b a n

R .

E u p h

r a t e s

R . K ı z ı l ı r m

a k

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S a k a r y

a

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a r da r

R .

M a r i t

z a

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D n ies te

r

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B u d a ( B u d i n )

E r z u r u m

A m a s y a

A y n t a b

( G a z i a n t e p )

P e c

I z n i k

Map Ottoman towns and cities in Anatolia and the Balkans


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xx


Istanbul Black Sea

Bursa

Konya

Aleppo

Damascus

Jerusalem

Cairo

Aqaba

Medina

Mecca

Jedda

Suakin

Mocha

Basra

Baghdad

Mosul

Diyarbekir

Trabzon

Erzurum

Kars Tiflis

Derbend

Baku

Tabriz VanBitlis

Tehran

Isfahan

Shiraz

R e d S e a

Mediterranean Sea

Caspian Sea

R . T

i g r i s

R . N

i l e

R . N

i l e

P e r s i a

n G u l f

R . E

u p h r a

t e s

N

Alexandria

Indian Ocean

Sana‘a

xx

Map The eastern and southern Ottoman world


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I N T R O D U C T I O N

Christine Woodhead

W as there such a thing as an ‘Ottoman world’? Among the numerous and variedanswers there must be to this question, three stand out for the purposes of thisbook. The first and most essential is the obvious territorial definition. The Ottomanempire as a political entity comprised most of the present Middle East (with the prin-cipal 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 ofethnic, religious and linguistic communities with varying political and cultural back-grounds. Further questions on the nature of the ‘Ottoman world’ now follow. Forinstance, 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 socie-ties? How did provincial regions relate to the imperial centre and what role was playedin this by local elites? How did the inhabitants of major cities such as Cairo or Damascusadjust to Ottoman rule, or did it adjust to them? What produced the consensus whichsupported the empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? To what degree didsubject peoples see themselves as part of a larger political and economic whole? Whatdid it mean in practice, for ordinary people, to be part of an ‘Ottoman world’?

Traditional study of the Ottoman empire based upon narrative sources inevita-bly focused on the dynasty in Istanbul, its military undertakings and its centralizedadministration. This tended towards a relatively narrow, government-centred assess-

ment 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 ofthe empire as a whole to dynastic and governmental stability, still linger in generalhistory textbooks, to the despair of most Ottomanist historians. Given its strong focuson Istanbul-centred government, traditional historiography did not raise such ques-tions about how the wider state functioned or about the lives and outlook of Ottomanpeople.

A second answer to the initial question is therefore to consider the nature of thesocieties which came under Ottoman rule, and to ask whether the latter had sufficientinfluence on social, political, economic or cultural developments across the empireso as to produce some definable degree or quality of ‘Ottoman-ness’ which was more


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— C h r i s t i n e W o o d h e a d —

than simply acceptance of the sultan’s government. However, this approach has beenneither popular nor, until relatively recently, possible. Unlike the British, French orSpanish empires, the Ottoman empire did not bequeath to its successor states a worldlanguage or a widespread and lasting change of religious faith. Most of the constituentparts into which the empire dissolved in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

could easily be portrayed in nationalist terms as having retained their integrity despiteOttoman rule, whether the latter was considered as irrelevant or oppressive, or both.The resulting historiographical distortions have been as difficult to overcome as hasthe decline paradigm.1

In conjunction with this deeper analysis of the Ottoman world, a third answer would take a still broader approach, expanding the term to include those areas andpolitical entities, neighbouring and distant – from Venice, to England, to Diu inIndia and Atjeh on Sumatra, from Poland to Central Asia and the Sudan – with whichOttomans and their state had diplomatic, commercial or cultural relations. Here, ‘theOttoman world’ is the extended world in which Ottomans operated, with the empha-

sis on trade, communication and comparable lifestyles, rather than on taxation andmilitarized organization. The old view that the Ottomans had little interest in thenon-Muslim world except as a site of potential conquest is no longer tenable. SuraiyaFaroqhi’s study of the interactions of Ottoman officials and ordinary individuals inthe pre-modern era with non-Ottoman merchants, captives, travellers and pilgrimsdemonstrates a world or mind generally no more closed than that of their Europeancounterparts.2 Several Ottomanist historians have also countered the persistent beliefthat the Ottomans were not interested in trade, a view which stemmed from over-emphasis on the activities of western merchants in the eastern Mediterranean. Notonly was the Ottoman-Muslim world sufficiently large to constitute in itself a ‘world

economy’; its preferred routes for commercial expansion extended not westwards intoEurope and across the Atlantic, but eastwards through the Indian Ocean and, duringthe sixteenth century, southwards down the east coast of Africa.3

This volume is concerned mainly with the second of these three understandings ofthe ‘Ottoman world’, with added perspectives offered by the third. It does not presentthis world through the eyes of the Istanbul-based Ottoman elite, as used to be the casein older works which relied primarily on official chronicles and government docu-ments. 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, maleand female, rich and poor, central and provincial, which enables historians to presenta very different picture.

In this respect the historian who, as a catalyst, has probably had the greatest influ-ence upon the development of Ottoman historical studies in the past half century isFernand Braudel. His belief that ‘the Turkish Mediterranean lived and breathed withthe same rhythms as the Christian . . . with identical problems and general trends’challenged Turkish historians to delve further into the Ottoman archives, to presenttheir findings to an increasingly interested outside audience and, ultimately, to engagein social-science-based comparative research.4 In recent decades such research hasexpanded Ottoman studies enormously in many directions. It has, for instance, empha-sized the essential pragmatism of the Ottoman administration and shown the degreeto 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


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to destabilize Ottoman rule. In contrast to the traditional view of tightly run centralinstitutions imposing their systems on subject peoples, we see that, as often as not, thegovernment 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 andsixteenth centuries. If the spider is the central administration in Istanbul, the threadsof its web extend along communication routes and are anchored securely only wherethey intersect, in the major towns and cities which were centres of Ottoman provincialadministration. The empty spaces between the threads represent the rural, desert, moun-tainous or otherwise sparsely populated areas where degrees of Ottoman authority variedconsiderably. A greater distance between urban administrative centres – the larger thegaps in the web – generally meant a less visible Ottoman presence. The spider’s web anal-ogy can be taken further: its adaptability, flexibility and relative ease of repair representone aspect, its essential ‘light touch’ a second. Most of these elements can generally befound 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 develop-ment of new markets and towns, particularly in the Balkans during the fifteenth century,also supports the appropriateness of the web analogy. To the old view that the Ottomanempire was a military state organized for and living off the spoils of war, and to the morerecent characterization of it as an agrarian empire funded by agricultural revenues, wemust add the political and economic significance of urban centres and note the import-ance to the central government of establishing strong working relationships with theleaders of urban society, whoever they might be.

PHASES OF OTTOMAN HISTORY

Considering how best to divide the study of Ottoman history into meaningful periodscan be a useful way to reassess dominant preconceptions. With no dynastic change forover years, there is no obvious point of disruption at which to stop and take stock.Ottoman historiography, with its considerable, and natural, emphasis upon institu-tional continuity, contributes significantly to the difficulty of identifying significantchange. Traditional ‘rise and decline’ views suggested two major periodizations. Thefirst, favoured by European historians, based on external affairs and emphasizing themilitary 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 politicaldevelopments, placing the beginning of ‘decline’ at some time in the later sixteenthcentury, either with the death of Süleyman in or with the onset of ‘corruption’in the reign of his grandson Murad III (–).5

In contrast to these centrally focused interpretations, one broad, empire-wide, socio-economic perspective suggests a three-stage Ottoman empire. The middle stage beginsaround , with the establishment of the Ottoman province of Hungary at the endof a thirty-year period of spectacular territorial expansion. Administrative reorganiza-tion, commercial prosperity and the maintenance of a largely self-sustaining Ottoman world economy characterize this ‘stable state’ second period. Only from around thes, due to a change in the dynamics of trade with Europe and ominous defeat inthe war of – against Russia, does the empire move into a final third stage.6


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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 ofdivision not only acknowledges the obvious administrative and commercial develop-ments associated with the sudden doubling in size of the empire, but also emphasizesreligious, legal and cultural aspects of Ottoman existence. Leaving aside the practi-calities 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 inthe former Mamluk empire. Ottoman adoption of the role of protector of the pilgrim-age routes to Mecca and of the Holy Cities themselves also coincided with the chal-lenge for control of Anatolia posed during the sixteenth century by the Shiite state ofSafavid Iran. An increasing ‘Sunnitization’ of the state resulted.

Other long-view periodizations of Ottoman history will emphasize different per-spectives, such as fiscal/financial, architectural, literary, and the history of communi-cations or of regional/provincial developments. However, dominant preconceptions

are equally well undermined by the determined focus of several historians on a specificproblem, as shown in the great gazi debate of the s and s.7 Was early Otto-man expansion driven by the desire for holy war ( gaza , fought by gazi s, holy warriors),by the restlessness of its nomadic, tribal following, by the desire for economic advan-tage through ever-extending control of trade routes, by the need to defend itself againstother, very similar Turkish groups, or by simple opportunism? So much appeared tohinge on correct understanding of this early phase – in Colin Imber’s term, the ‘blackhole’ in Ottoman history – which was made all the more tantalizing because of theshortage 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 movementscaused by socio-economic push factors such as population pressure, poor harvests andover-taxation, or were they the result more of political pull factors such as recruitmentof armed peasants as mercenary troops and the possibility of enhanced social statusand/or financial opportunity in employment off the land? What role was played bydissatisfied 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 administrationand ideology which arose from an accumulation of several factors. In the early impe-rial 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 adaptedfrom previous Byzantine fief-holding and taxation practices. Similarly, successfuladministration of the former Mamluk regions of Syria and Egypt after relied ontaking over much of the previous system, together with its middle and lower-rank-ing Mamluk officials. However, by around , as Ottoman territorial expansionlargely ceased, challenges for government were no longer those of incorporating newregions but of solving new problems which arose internally and for which there wereno precedents, models or experienced practitioners already in existence. Such newproblems included not only the socio-economic disruption caused by the celali upris-ings, but also changes in military technology which required alteration in the balance

between cavalry and infantry, and hence different recruitment patterns and methods of


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payment. They included unprecedented financial difficulties compounded by a percent devaluation in the Ottoman silver currency in the mid-s and by the need toalter methods of tax assessment and collection. They also included increased competi-tion for appointment in both administrative and judicial professions, and the increas-ing prominence of clientage networks and associated accusations of corruption. Theresponse 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 aperiod of ‘crisis and change’, it is also a period of ‘trial and error’, in working out thesenew approaches. Some of these worked, and some did not. From this resulted theapparent chaos and seeming lack of direction which for long made the seventeenthcentury 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 recentlyin Baki Tezcan’s notion of a ‘second Ottoman empire’ from around , Ottomanisthistorians have largely jettisoned the notion of a post- ‘decline’ and are identify-ing instead significant elements of continuity and development.

One of these elements, the role of provincial elites throughout the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, constitutes a third area of major debate and reassessment byhistorians.8 As long as an efficient, centralized system of government was regarded asthe key to Ottoman success in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, then anykind of later decentralization tended to be viewed negatively. Thus the ayan (‘localnotables’, particularly those with political or military influence) were seen to posean increasing challenge to Ottoman authority. However, treating both the Ottomanchronicle record and later nationalist histories with due care, historians now view pro-vincial elites of various kinds as permanent and essential elements within Ottomansociety, without whose co-operation the government would have had difficulty func-

tioning at virtually any period. If early Ottoman rule in the Balkans was facilitated bythe appointment of local Christian lords as timar holders, later Ottoman rule in mostprovincial areas, both urban and rural, was also facilitated by the co-option of localayan 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 ‘Otto-man 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 aboutsultans, Janissaries and grand vezirs as such, about military campaigns, or about for-eign or domestic policy emanating from Istanbul. Rather, it is about the constants andgivens of Ottoman society, about the definition of ‘Ottoman’, and about the forces which supported and challenged this. It is about the limits of Ottoman reach, aboutsignificant factors influencing the lives of ordinary people in the empire, and abouthow the nature of the Ottoman world appeared in the eighteenth century. It addressesaspects of the social, and to some extent the socio-ideological, composition of a majorpre-modern empire, offering a combination of broad synthesis and detailed investiga-tion 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 aspecific aspect of the larger question. The essays in Part I address fundamental aspects


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of Ottoman society which were either constantly present throughout the empire’shistory or which helped lay the foundations for the later empire. Sufism and piousendowments were cornerstones of everyday life for Ottoman Muslims, with endow-ments such as soup kitchens also open to non-Muslims. The almost ubiquitous pres-ence of nomadic groups may have made settled farmers uneasy and the lives of taxcollectors 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 over-land caravans would have been more difficult to obtain. Above all, the essays in thissection emphasize the importance always attached by the Ottomans to a sound econ-omy and to a well-regulated and fair legal basis to society.

Part II addresses the crucial question of what or who was originally meant bythe term ‘Ottoman’. Derived from the simple descriptor Osmanlı, ‘the followers orhousehold of Osman’, ‘Ottoman’ was a dynastic term, comparable to Habsburg orRomanov, used to denote a royal household, which became an imperial government.On account of the practice of recruiting slave troops and administrators from non-

Muslim peoples, and the attractions of Ottoman service to non-Turkish volunteers, atno stage – even in the fourteenth century – was the Ottoman ruling group completelyTurkish ethnically.10 Despite the seeming interchangeability of ‘Ottoman’ and ‘Turk’in some types of historical writing, these terms were never synonymous. Mostly, theydenoted two completely different layers of society. Understanding how the ‘Ottoman’amalgam of sultan and servitors developed, and how it was constantly evolving andexpanding, both politically and culturally, is one of the keys to understanding thenature and longevity of the empire. This section of the book contains essays on thecreation and projection of an Ottoman identity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centu-ries, and how the ‘us and them’ division was being constantly renegotiated.

The development of an Ottoman rhetoric of universal sovereignty was almostinevitable in the sixteenth century, and was paralleled by the comparable claims in western Europe of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. In practice, the pragma-tism and accommodation of local interests which were hallmarks of Ottoman govern-ment everywhere were particularly so in frontier regions. Given that the Ottomansdid not inherit a ready-made, clearly defined state, it is worth noting that virtuallyall 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 andeast, 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 thecosts and difficulties of maintaining an Ottoman presence began to outweigh thereturns. Essays on the spread of plague and on eighteenth-century Ottoman merchantcommunities in western Europe emphasize continuing Ottoman connections, bothindirect and direct, beyond these frontiers.

Part IV builds upon the social constants considered in Part I by considering ingreater detail specific aspects common to the daily life of large numbers of ordinarypeople, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Domestic slavery and household formation,guild organization, non-Muslim courts, literacy levels, women’s rights to divorce, andhow 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


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impossible, to study seriously in an Ottoman context. There is now a much broaderperspective in which to set the observations of European travellers on Ottoman society.Two major social groups, merchants and scholars, are under-represented in this vol-ume, partly though not entirely because the primary focus of interest in these groupslies outside its scope. As mentioned above, views on the extent, independence andcommercial significance of Ottoman trade have been revised considerably in recentyears. With regard to scholars, contemporary Ottoman biographical dictionaries havealways made possible prosopographical studies of the Istanbul-based ulema . Recentstudies especially of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Syrian scholars will surelyprompt a significant re-evaluation of our understanding of the pre-modern scholarlyoutlook.12 It could also be said that there is insufficient attention given here to non-Muslim Ottoman communities. While at one level this is true, at another it could beargued that, as non-Muslims are discussed in several of the essays simply as part ofOttoman society generally, this is an appropriate reflection of how, in the pre-modernperiod, they were, on the whole, perceived.

Finally, the essays in Part V broaden the perspective once again to consider imperialcohesion and the crucial question of to what extent provincial elites and societies in theseventeenth 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 continuingflexibility of Ottoman societies in their relationship to the imperial centre.

The chronological period covered by this volume ends for the most part in the earlynineteenth century, thus omitting the final century of Ottoman history. In this senseit 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 foreignpolicy markers. The Ottoman nineteenth century has been studied intensively frommany different angles, both for its own sake and as a precursor to the emergence ofthe modern Turkish republic.13 The aim of this volume is to draw attention to recentscholarship on the early and middle periods of the empire, those eras which are moredistant from us in time and which appear more alien in nature, on which some of themore tenacious scholarly views have been held, and where now the most exciting newresearch is to be found.

NOTES

Hathaway : , on the tendency among Arab nationalist historians to view Ottoman ruleas at best ‘a demoralizing prelude’ to nineteenth-century western-inspired reforms.

Faroqhi . Faroqhi : –; Eldem : –; Hanna ; Casale . Braudel : I, preface; see also I

.nalcık .

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. ).


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See e.g., Lowry a. For the classic account of Ottoman methods of incorporation in the early period, see I

.nalcık

. 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 Otto-man histiography, chapter 30, pp. 455–6, 457–9, in this volume.


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PART I

FOUNDATIONS


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CHAPTER ONE

N O M A D S A N D T R I B E S I N T H E

O T T O M A N E M P I R E

Reşat Kasaba

ORIGINS

The territories of the Ottoman empire intersected with what geographers refer toas the ‘sub-Arctic nomadic zone’, which extended from the Mediterranean littoral,through the Anatolian peninsula and the Iranian plateau, on to the mountains of Cen-tral Asia. For millennia, tens of thousands of tribes moved constantly across this beltof high mountains and dry steppes and deserts. Starting in the eleventh century, Tur-kic and Mongolian tribes arrived in Anatolia and eastern Mediterranean lands. Theybecame integrated into the indigenous patterns of circulation and altered forever thesocial and political make-up and the history of these regions. As they passed throughthese lands, these tribes interacted with local communities; some melded into localrelations and networks and abandoned their journey, while others continued to move.Superimposition of the long-distance migrations onto local structures and movementscreated a highly fluid social environment throughout this territory. Especially in Ana-tolia, between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries it became difficult to distinguishbetween the arriving, staying, or departing tribes, let alone between sedentary andnomadic communities. This was the context within which the Ottoman empire grewto become a world empire after the thirteenth century.

The integration of the goat- and sheep-herding Türkmen communities of the Ana-tolian 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 charac-terization in ethnic, religious or administrative terms. At least initially, the Ottomanshad neither the means nor the intention to settle permanently or discipline nomadictribes. Instead, classifying tribes in their existing state appeared to be a more pragmaticapproach. As their empire grew quickly in western Anatolia and the Balkans, the Otto-mans continued to balance their interest in strengthening the empire’s administrativestructure and its peasant base with the obvious need to define a clear place for nomadswithin Ottoman rural society. To this end, they developed special laws to monitor theactivities of tribes and recorded tribal affairs separately in special documents.1 Main-taining 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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— R e ş a t Ka sa ba —

spend summers at the source of the Euphrates in the interior of eastern Anatolia andthen move south to the Syrian desert for the winter, a distance of over miles.2 Someof the tribes were huge, with as many as , to , individuals and sometimesseveral 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 inassessing the liabilities of tribes, these were indeed wealthy and formidable units.

The Ottomans not only kept the existing patterns of tribal migration intact, butthey also encouraged mobility, making this an even larger part of the make-up ofOttoman society. For example, sedentary and nomadic communities were forced bythe state to move across long distances, either as a method of punishment or as a wayof settling newly conquered areas. It should be noted, however, that forceful relocationof nomadic tribes for punitive or strategic reasons did not automatically entitle themto land, since they were not necessarily encouraged or expected to adopt sedentaryfarming in their new places.4 Instead, in line with established practices in their placesof origin, these communities were allocated grazing lands, since it was assumed that

they would continue their pastoral nomadism in the new regions.

ADMINISTRATION

In administrative parlance, Ottoman officials referred to tribes as aşiret . In order tofacilitate 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 ( yarı- göçebe 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 administrativ e units the Ottomans recognized among the Kurds andTürkmens were il and ulus .6 The two largest of these were the Boz Ulus , consist-ing largely but not exclusively of Türkmens, and Kara Ulus , consisting largely, butnot exclusively, of Kurds.7 Ulus confederations were divided into smaller groups, indescending order, as boy (sometimes taife ), cemaat and kabile . Yürüks , on the otherhand, were spun off from Türkmen kabiles and were not organized in the larger unitsof 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 cir-culated.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 fromoutside. These groups were given names and were recognized by the Ottoman admin-istration only after they had already taken shape through their own internal dynamics.The tribal units which the Ottomans recognized for the purposes of administeringcould be very large yet territorially loose. In the sixteenth century, there were morethan separate tribes in various sizes registered as part of the Boz Ulus confed-eracy, whose population then is estimated to have been more than , tents with million sheep. Their seasonal migrations covered an area extending from Mardin insouth-eastern Anatolia all the way to Iran and Georgia.9

In addition to recognizing the existing groupings and regrouping them under newlabels, the Ottoman government appointed high-ranking officers to administer theaffairs of tribal communities and to assess and collect their taxes. Being at least partially


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— N o m a d s a n d t r i b e s i n t h e O t t o m a n e m p i r e —

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 tribeswho were registered into the army were supervised by seraskers . Like other administra-tive 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 adjudicatedin intra- and intertribal matters. As a further indication of the government’s willing-ness to accommodate these communities, these kadıs would sometimes accompanythe tribes as the latter went through their seasonal cycles of migration.10 Even thoughthe titles of the officials who were in charge of tribes and those who were responsiblefor peasant households and villages were identical, there were important variationsin the way in which the two sets of administrators were appointed. Perhaps moreimportantly, while the central organization of the Ottoman administration and itsapplication in sedentary rural areas were highly centralized and hierarchical, there wasa strong element of bottom-up initiative and indigenous identification which shapedthe nature of Ottoman administration in tribal areas.

Of the indigenous tribes which the Ottomans came to dominate, the Kurdish com-munities constitute a special category. They were one of the largest ethnically distinctand predominantly Muslim communities whose presence in this part of the worldlong predated the Ottoman empire. The Ottomans were aware of the local power ofthis community and their policies contributed to the long-term survival of the Kurdsas 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 thatwas used towards Christian communities in western Anatolia and the Balkans in thefourteenth and fifteenth centuries.12

In general, Ottomans favoured Sunni Kurds over their Alevi counterparts. Mostof the favours and preferential treatment were directed at them. Sunni Kurds werealso encouraged to form a buffer against Iran and as an ally in lengthy struggles withthe local Shi’i communities (Kurdish and otherwise), some of whom supported theIranian rulers. Some Kurdish chiefs took advantage of these conditions and used theirties 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 recognizingthe power of the Kurdish chiefs, reinforcing the hereditary nature of Kurdish tribal

chiefdom, and prohibiting local military commanders and governors from harassingthe Kurdish tribes.Generally, nomadic tribes were exempted from many of the taxes and dues that

were levied on most peasant households. Even with the special taxes that were imposedon them, the tax burden on nomads ended up being lighter than the obligations ofsedentary farmers. The most commonly imposed tax on all pastoral nomads was adet-iagnam (sheep tax), which was determined on the basis of the size and quality ofthe herds owned by a particular tribe or confederation of tribes. Nomads were alsorequired to pay a series of fees for their grazing lands and pastures, as well as specialdues if they harmed or lost their own or other people’s animals or slaves. Along withthe rest of the peasants, nomads also had to pay marriage tax (resm-i arus or gerdekakçesi ). 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 waswell off and also whether he was single, married, living with his parents or livingalone.14 Naturally, nomads were aware of their special status, and they used it in rais-ing complaints against officials who sought to impose additional dues on them. Insuch complaints they insisted that they were not tax-paying subjects (reaya ) but hadspecial 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 affectingthe outcome of such complaints.

NOMADS IN OTTOMAN STATE AND SOCIETY

While the Ottoman land system was premised on the existence and preservation ofpeasant households (çift-hane ), this same system also preserved and incorporated thelarge number of nomadic tribes and regulated their interaction with sedentary farm-

ers. 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 thestate with special safeguards, rules, and privileges’.16 Numerous laws and regulationswere issued by Ottoman officials to regulate the migratory routes of nomads and toguarantee their livelihood and safety.17 Even the laws protecting the rights of peasantsagainst the incursions of nomads and their animals did not leave the nomadic popula-tion without any safeguards. In many regions, there were specially designated pathsalong which the tribes were expected to herd their animals, but the peasants were alsorequired to mark their lands clearly and to build fences around them if these landswere on the migratory routes of a tribe.

Before the eighteenth century, the settlement activities promoted and enforced bythe Ottoman government were limited in focus and purpose. Most typically, theywere carried out in order to (re)populate newly conquered areas in the Balkans and toenhance security in frontier zones. Even then, tribes were not necessarily required toabandon nomadism entirely. Otherwise, the only other large-scale resettlement carriedout before the eighteenth century targeted not the nomads but the peasants who hadfled in the face of the celali uprisings in the seventeenth century.18

Official tolerance towards tribes was rooted in the fact that pastoral nomadism hadbecome integral to the organization of the Ottoman empire in a number of differentways. 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 becameparticularly pronounced during harvest time. Migrant labour belonging to variousnomadic tribes moved over long distances to participate in various harvest activities inthe west. Workers coming from northern and eastern Anatolia could be found in andaround Bursa and Izmir. They routinely took advantage of the higher wages, whichcould go up by as much as three times their normal rates during harvest season. Theirparticipation in harvest and other economic activities meant that most of the timethese tribes were functioning as transhumant communities in the west. Only part ofa tribe would move between the lowlands and the mountain pastures, while the restbecame involved in sedentary activities, including farming. Even those who movedwere not necessarily cut off from farming completely as they would incorporate it intotheir seasonal migration. In the course of their migration they would cultivate the


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abandoned or unclaimed lands (which could be plenty) that they encountered or workas sharecroppers or seasonal labourers on lands cultivated by peasants in their regions.The existence of these extensive relationships shows that the underlying system of set-tled agriculture was strong and that there was division of labour between this sectorand the migrating groups and individuals.

The interchange between villages and migrants could take even more complexforms. For example, the collective ownership of land, called musha ’, that prevailed insome of the Arab provinces, in particular in western Syria, did not grant permanentownership or possession to any single household that was part of this system. Instead,individual parcels were periodically redistributed among the households, includingseasonal migrants who might be residing in the village. In this way, musha ’ providedthe migrants with another means of entry into local economic networks.19 This showsthat, despite appearances, neither migration in rural areas nor the interaction ofnomads with local economy was random. The central government was aware of thesystematic 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 set-tled peasants and nomads were engaged in the production of soap in the seventeenthcentury, and the two competed with each other to obtain raw materials such as alka-line ash, which was a key ingredient.21 Some of the key export items such as naturaldyes and timber were gathered from the interior of Anatolia by nomads and sold tomerchants on major trade routes.22 Often, nomadic tribes were the sole purveyors ofanimals such as camels, donkeys, mules and horses, which were the main means oftransportation for civilian and military purposes. We should note, for example, that

nomadic tribes were the sole suppliers of the more than , camels and as manymules that the Ottoman army required on its campaigns. Their control of the empire’slarge and small animal stock meant that nomads were indispensable for the operationof regional and imperial networks of trade. Also, the fact that they specialized in rais-ing 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 character-ized the relations between nomads and the settled villagers and townspeople. Just asstrongly as the sedentary groups, nomads were dependent on the commercial nexusthat linked them to other groups on their paths. They had to have access to regionalmarkets in order to obtain a wide variety of necessities, including food items, construc-

tion materials, horseshoes, and even some of their weapons. Such exchanges were aregular part of the economies of various regions of the Ottoman empire.23

Nomads also provided some very important services in the integration and organi-zation of the empire on a macro-level. For example, the so-called Arab camel driverscould be found in most provinces of Anatolia, sometimes moving with their animalsacross a large swathe of territory extending from the Dardanelles to Adana in thesouth.24 Nomads facilitated the flow of goods and resources; they made it possible forthe Ottoman troops to move quickly across long distances, and they herded, gathered,grew or manufactured valuable goods of consumption and trade. In times of fam-ine and other natural or man-made disasters, the Ottoman government relied on theservices of nomadic tribes to move large quantities of grains and other foodstuffs andnecessities 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 guardingand protection of such structures.26

Nomadic tribes made an equally significant contribution to the military organiza-tion and success of the Ottoman empire in the early part of its history. It was by relyingon intrinsically mobile groups such as nomads, and unattached single men, that theOttoman government could mobilize large numbers of troops without threateningthe integrity and viability of the peasant economy. In fact, so central were their mili-tary activities that, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Ottoman governmentregistered many of the yürük communities as military companies (müsellem) ready tobe called to the front in times of war or provide support services in war or peace.27 Insome instances the Ottomans did not even have to channel or harness the movementsof local tribes but simply followed them. This was the case with the , nomadswho in the fourteenth century spontaneously moved and settled in the Balkans, wherethey 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 whichwere crucial in military campaigns as well as in peace time. In the Arab provinces theBedouin were paid special fees by the government so that they would provide some ofthese services and, in particular, to keep pilgrimage routes open and secure.29

Not surprisingly, the importance and variety of the activities in which nomads wereinvolved and the crucial role the chiefs played in mobilizing their followers made someof these leaders extremely wealthy, powerful and highly autonomous. One historianestimates that ‘even the poorest herdsman could be placed in the same category as apeasant cultivating a full çift of – dönüms or – acres of land’. In , twoconfederations in eastern Anatolia had become so wealthy that they paid million akçe

in taxes to the central government.30

NOMADISM AS A MEANS OFRESISTANCE AGAINST THE STATE

Like all itinerant groups in history, nomadic tribes in the Ottoman empire had theoption of using their mobility as a weapon. When they lacked the means to organizea 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 countrysideto 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 wouldroam the countryside, raid and rob villagers and merchant caravans. The end of thesixteenth century was one such period of upheaval in the Ottoman empire, whichoverlaps with a Mediterranean-wide increase in banditry, described by Braudel as ‘anexplosion of liberation from the Mediterranean mountains’.32

The Ottoman response to such actions was typically punitive, involving the forceddisplacement of the individuals and tribes involved. But even such confrontations didnot necessarily imply a categorical opposition to nomadism on the part of the centralgovernment, but rather a more focused response to ideological, political and/or for-eign 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


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multiplied. This subtle shift of power towards civilian authorities created a deep senseof 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 factthat the very mobility of the tribes gave them an important means of protection – andthe possibility of evasion by flight – the central government approached sedentariza-tion cautiously. Rather than relying only on force, officials tried to make the optionof settlement and joining the army attractive by offering a wide range of incentivesto those tribes who agreed to change their status. Such tribes were exempted from allregular duties (nomadic or sedentary) for several years at a time. In addition, they weregranted free seeds and oxen, better access to sources of irrigation, and other encourage-ments and subventions that were tailored specially for different regions. In return forthese privileges the nomads were typically required to abandon their peripatetic livesand assume sedentary farming. They would pay a one-time special tax and desist fromattacking or harming villages and the villagers in their new areas of settlement. In someparts 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 cen-tral and southern Anatolia. The Ottoman government also offered similar incentivesto fugitive peasants who had quit their lands and were roaming the countryside.

Even though such encouragements could be attractive, tribal members resisted reg-istration and sedentarization, since these were usually followed by additional demandsfor taxes and military service.39 It was common for them to ignore, deflect, subvertor resist government orders. While it was usually the tribal chiefs who complainedand wrote the petitions, it was not uncommon for individual members of a tribe totake the lead in such matters. The most common causes for complaint by the tribeswas 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 usu-ally referred them to higher-ranking bureaucrats. Not surprisingly, the desert areas ofRakka in Syria where a large number of nomads were forced to settle formed a par-ticularly strong source of discontent for the tribes that were sent there. Lack of waterand limited vegetation were the main factors that the tribal leaders cited in demandinga change in their orders of settlement. Occasionally, tribes mobilized a large numberof their members to resist the central government’s order, not only by fighting Otto-man forces but also by making their places of settlement inhospitable by burning anddestroying the existing fields.40 Whether tribes would rebel and whether local notableswould support the rebellious tribes depended on local conditions. The particular posi-

tion taken by a tribe did not necessarily stay the same either. In response to changingcircumstances, a tribe could switch from being rebellious to being supportive of thegovernment, or vice versa.41

In trying to settle the nomadic tribal communities and others, the Ottoman govern-ment also clashed with villagers whose interests were threatened by the introductionof new groups in their midst.42 An important part of this conflict was rooted in theownership patterns in Ottoman agriculture, which had created several distinct groupswith equally strong and competing claims of rights, especially in the more fertile areasof Anatolia and Mesopotamia. In addition to the peasants who had been workingthe land, these groups included tax farmers, absentee landlords, and members of thesultan’s household, all of whom had become de facto landlords with the introductionof life-long leases in .43 In a pattern that would repeat itself many times in the


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eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, absentee landlords could agree to governmentpolicies of sedentarization and pacification for their own reasons, while the peasantswho were the actual cultivators in possession of the land strongly opposed the arrivalof refugees and the settlement of nomadic tribes. In fact, most of the complaints ofwhich records have survived, and which provide information about the processes andproblems of settling nomads, were filed by villagers. Especially in western Anatolia, thecommon claim was that the land was already congested and that settling new groupswould make life very difficult for people already living there. It was not uncommon forthe Ottoman government to heed these complaints and reverse its position.44

Even though there were regional successes, overall, the sedentarization policies of theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not produce a permanently settled society.In fact, by the early nineteenth century the trend had once again turned in the oppo-site direction, with nomadism and nomadic tribes growing. While exact numbers areimpossible to come by, one contemporary account estimates that, on the eve of themid-nineteenth-century tanzimat , there were, just in Adana, as many as , nomads

compared with merely , settled peasants.45 Rather than shrinking, some of thetribes were steadily expanding their power as well, some behaving as if they had all butseceded from the empire. This development was caused, in part, by the impossibility ofimposing 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 harderfor the central government to carry out its directives for creating a more sedentaryempire. In particular, the inability of the Ottomans to fill the vacuum left by the Rus-

sians after the – war allowed local notables and Kurdish chiefs to expand theirpower in the east. Some Kurdish tribes quickly gained control of a series of citadels inthe border areas of eastern Anatolia, creating a region that was effectively cut off fromthe rest of the empire. They then used these as bases to attack travellers, traders andpeasants.46 One of these Kurdish chiefs, Badr Khan, eventually controlled the entireregion between Diyarbakir and Mosul, becoming so powerful that in the s andthe s he issued coins in his own name.47 Even though they were expanding theirpower, building palaces, maintaining armed forces, and even establishing dynasties,the Kurdish tribes never abandoned their pastoral nomadism completely. They con-tinued 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 keepthe centre at bay, being always prepared to revert to their nomadic lives if conditionschanged. This made it nearly impossible for the Ottoman empire ever completely tosubdue and control the Kurdish tribes in the east.

In the period between the abolition of the Janissaries in and the creation ofa new professional army, the Ottoman government carried out a series of campaignsusing former soldiers and local irregulars. The purpose of these campaigns was topacify the border areas that had become all but ungovernable. In particular, the gov-ernment 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 theBedouin who had been pushed north to Syria during the eighteenth-century Wahhabiuprisings 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 wereparticularly challenged by the situation in the Taurus region in the south. To deal withthe large confederation of tribes which all but controlled of a large swathe of territoryhere, 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 setup as a military operation, the campaign by the fırka-i ıslahiyye was carried out as acomprehensive programme of pacification and sedentarization which also created newtowns and novel methods of administration; all were designed to strengthen the tiesbetween the centre and these regions.

Staging military campaigns was only one part of the Ottoman response to the

Documents

The Ottoman World