Ottoman Cities Research Articles

Linguistic diversity and everyday life in the Ottoman cities of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans (late 19th–early 20th century)

The paper intends to describe the language situation in major Ottoman urban centres in Europe, Asia and Africa during the last decades of Ottoman rule at the scale of family and everyday life. This limitation is necessary since important developments had taken place during the Tanzimat period leading to significant alterations in the population structure, in particular to an increase of the non-Muslim population. Major languages of urban communication used by the locals as well as by foreign residents, were in the late 19th Century Turkish, Greek, French and – in the Arabic provinces – Arabic. Among the languages of minor importance were Judaeo-Spanish, Armenian, and others. Apart from the role played by language in Ottoman urban culture in general, more specific aspects such as the effects of spatial segregation, multilingualism, and the diversity of accents and dialects, or registers are also be dealt with. As a matter of fact, the linguistic situation in most Ottoman cities was complex and variegated. The same applies to the sources used for this paper: they include travel accounts, tourist guides, conversation manuals, satirical papers, popular drama, fiction (novels), personal narratives, studies on slang and also the pictorial record.

Istanbul Judeo-Spanish

The Judeo-Spanish speaking population of Istanbul is the result of migrations that were due to the edict of expulsion of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1492. The Ottoman ruler Bayezid II provided a haven to the exiles in his realm, and many came as immigrants to the capital Istanbul and other major port cities in that year. A continuous trickle of immigration of Jews originating in Spain continued after that date, as some of those who had gone to exile in other Mediterranean and Western European countries eventually also decided to resettle in Ottoman cities. Some Spanish-speaking families continued to migrate from the cities of the Italian peninsula to Istanbul and other centers of the Ottoman empire up until the eighteenth century. Another stream included Hispano-Portuguese families, Jews who had resettled in Portugal after the expulsion but were forced to undergo conversion there in 1497, and after a period of clandestine Jewish existence started emigrating to other countries in the sixteenth century. First Bayonne in France, then Amsterdam and other Hanseatic cities became important centers for Hispano-Portuguese families that returned to Judaism, and these maintained relations with, and occasionally sent immigrants to, the Jewish communities of the Ottoman cities.

XIX. Yüzyılın İlk Yarısında Tokat'ta Fiyatlar

Osmanlı kentlerindeki fiyat hareketleri, genel olarak Osmanlı Devleti'nin ekonomik yapısının şekillenmesinde oldukça etkili olmuştur. Fiyatlar, özellikle halkın alım gücü, arz-talep ilişkisinin tespiti, yönü ve oranı ile ekonomik yapının gelişmesi ve genişlemesine etki etmiştir. Fiyatlar; aynı zamanda toplumun sosyal, idari, askeri ve kültürel ilişkilerini de düzenleyen önemli bir faktör olarak ortaya çıkmaktadır. Osmanlı şehirlerindeki gıda maddeleri ve temel ihtiyaç maddelerinin fiyat hareketleri daha çok Narh Meclisi'nde verilen fiyatlarla takip edilebilmektedir. Genellikle yılda iki defa Kadı huzurunda bütün esnaf temsilcilerinin katıldıkları Narh Meclisi'nde verilen narhlarda bütün zaruri gıda ve ihtiyaç maddelerinin fiyatlarını görmek mümkündür. Diğer yandan hububat fiyatlarını serbest piyasa fiyatları olarak kabul edilen tereke defterlerine göre ortaya çıkarmak daha isabetli sonuçlar vermektedir. Tokat'ta gıda maddelerine ve diğer ihtiyaç maddelerine verilen fiyatlar, Narh Meclisi tarafından tespit edildikten sonra, genellikle şer'iye sicillerinin baş ya da sonlarına cins, miktar ve birim fiyatları baz alınarak kaydedilirdi. Ayrıca bazen de şer'iye sicilleri dışında narh fiyatlarını müstakil olarak gösteren narh defterlerinin düzenlendiği de olmaktaydı. Bu çalışmada Tokat şer'iye sicilleri taranarak narh ve tereke fiyatlarına göre Tokat'taki gıda maddeleri başta olmak üzere temel ihtiyaç maddeleri fiyatları ortaya çıkarılacak ve sonrasında da fiyat hareketleri izlenecektir. Bu yolla Tokat'ta incelenen dönem içinde gıda maddeleri ve temel ihtiyaç maddelerindeki fiyat artışları, bunlara sebep olan etkenler üzerine bir değerlendirme yapılacaktır.

State formation and urbanization trajectories: state finance in the Ottoman Empire before 1800, as seen from a Dutch perspective

AbstractLooking at state finance in the Ottoman Empire from a Dutch perspective shows remarkable differences between the two systems. This article suggests that these differences were related to the fact that, in contrast to those in the Ottoman Empire, fiscal systems in western Europe, and especially in the Netherlands, developed within a context of economy-driven rather than state-driven trajectories of urbanization. This gave rise to separate systems of urban public finance, which enhanced possibilities for funding a debt serviced by indirect urban taxes, the root of later state debts. In Ottoman cities, systems of urban public finance managed by urban governments did not develop, thus precluding a similar development.

Wills, deeds, acts: women's civic gift-giving in Ottoman Istanbul

The waqf (plural awqaf) is the Islamic pious endowment founded for charitable purposes. The Ottoman waqf, especially between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, became a gift-giving practice of solidarity in which women played an active role in founding and maintaining endowments as benefactors. These endowments served almost exclusively civic public services. While there has been considerable research on women and waqf, by moving beyond interpreting the ostensible motives that are always intertwined with women's role as ‘family caretakers’ or ‘devout Muslims’, we attempt to suggest that, interpreted as acts of piety, awqaf, and especially those that were founded as organized spaces known as külliyes, became institutions by which women were able to cultivate (in themselves and others) civic identities, and articulate civic solidarities as citizens of their cities. This image of women as civic gift-givers recasts them as active citizens of Ottoman cities, especially Istanbul.

Jadidism in South-eastern Europe: The Influence of Ismail Bey Gaspirali among Bulgarian Turks

The research in this article addresses the impact of Jadidism1 among the Bulgarian Turks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by examining the influences of the movement's most noted proponent, Ismail Bey Gaspirali (18511914), particularly as reflected in the newspapers of the day.2 In doing so, this study complements existing and steadily emerging historical scholarship on both Gaspirali and Jadidism by further elaborating on current knowledge regarding the geographic and ethno-national diffusions of his ideas. Moreover and concerning the Bulgarian Turks themselves, this work reveals intellectual and socio-political linkages that existed between Bulgarian Turkish communities and those of ethno-linguistic and religious kinsmen in both Tsarist and Ottoman imperial realms. From the early 1990s, academic sources began to acknowledge the profound connections between nineteenth-century introductions of print technologies and media in the Islamic world, on the one hand, and the emergence of modern reformist and nationalist movements, on the other.3 While many of the early publications were printings of earlier manuscripts, several were also written by Jadidist reformers of the era. In general, these reformers' works came to constitute the seminal texts for modernist and nationalist movements in much of Islamic Eurasia. Although most studies of such movements have thus far concerned themselves with Jadidism in the Crimea, Central Asia, and key Ottoman cities, relatively scant attention has been devoted as yet to the movement's impact among the numerous Islamic minority populations of South-eastern Europe. The Jadidist Ismail Bey Gaspirali was certainly the most prominent Crimean Tatar of that period spanning the latenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Both during his lifetime and since, he was regarded as an esteemed leader, an educator, reformer, journalist, and an idealist not only by the Crimean Tatars but also by large numbers of Turkic peoples everywhere. In these various capacities, he has been credited with both defending the ethnonational status and promoting the unity of the Turks throughout the world through 'language, ideas, and action'. Thus far, there have been a good number of books and articles written in a number of different languages about Gaspirali's life, his ideas (e.g. his views on Tatar and Turkic ethnic and national identities, reform, education, language, journalism, and the relations of Turkic peoples with Ottoman, Russian, and Islamic leaders and governments), and his political and cultural activities among the Tatars and other

18世紀イスタンブルにおける靴産業の同職組合

In Ottoman cities, the shoe industry had played an important socioeconomic function as one of the chief industries. Very few studies, however, have ever tried to elucidate the actual state of the shoe industry and guilds. This study aims to create a concrete picture of their role in eighteenth-century Istanbul, with a focus on their structures, processes of their production and trade, and their relationship with the government. The principle resource used in this paper was the Ahkâm Defterleri, which was published as Istanbul Esnaf Tarihi by the Istanbul Arastirmalari Merkezi.The shoe industry was clearly divided into two sectors—production and retailing. Shoemakers had become specialized according to the type of shoes they made. They had their own guilds according to the kind of shoes and were all well organized under a leader called the dikicibasi. Meanwhile, most shoe retailers had their shops in shoe markets called arasta. Each market was staffed with one kethüdâ to supervise the shoe retailers working there. The kethüdâ of the kebîr arasta administrated all the shoe retailers in the city. He also had a degree of influence on the shoemakers' guilds and undertook to maintain cooperation between the shoemakers' and the retailers' guilds.Though the guilds needed the approval of kadis or the government in regard to all matters, they were hardly interfered with by the government, but were managed and administrated strictly by the leaders in a quite autonomous manner. Especially, shoemakers had to buy materials and produce shoes in accordance with the regulations which guilds made to protect members against violation of their rights.This paper concludes that the guilds of the shoe industry in eighteenthcentury Istanbul formed a complex structure in order to supervise their members who produced and sold many kinds of shoes in many places, and that the guilds were granted a relatively wide degree of autonomy.

A Portrait of the Ottoman Cities

A Portrait of the Ottoman Cities

REAL WAGES AND STANDARDS OF LIVING IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1489–1914

Utilizing a large volume of archival documents, this study establishes for the first time the long-term trends in real wages of skilled and unskilled construction workers in Istanbul and other Ottoman cities in southeastern Europe and the Middle East, from the second half of the fifteenth century until World War I. A detailed consumer price index and nominal wage indices are constructed for the city of Istanbul for this purpose. These price and wage series are then inserted into a larger framework of price and wage trends in European cities during the same period.

The Islamization of Ottoman Cities

The Islamization of Ottoman Cities

Regional Trade and 19th-Century Mosul: Revising the Role of Europe in the Middle East Economy

During the past two decades, historians of the last Ottoman centuries have produced ground-breaking research documenting the increasing economic interaction between Europe and the Middle East. Relying on information about the empire's trade with Europe, scholars have concluded that the 19th century was a time of transformation–in culture, in politics, and in economics. By thus calling our attention to changing circumstances, these historians, economists, art historians, and sociologists have outlined a general landscape of upheaval and change.1Monographs on Ottoman cities, focusing on the effects of international trade on coastal areas, have begun to sketch in the epicenters of massive economic dislocation.2

Urban Population in Anatolia in the Sixteenth Century: A Study of Kayseri, Karaman, Amasya, Trabzon, and Erzurum

The rapid rise in the population of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century is well known. Ömer Lütfi Barkan long ago published a table showing that twelve important Ottoman cities grew from a combined population of 142,562 in 1520/1530 to a population of 271,494 in 1571/1580; likewise he has shown that the population of five major provinces in Anatolia grew 59.9 per cent in the same period, from 872,610 to 1,360,474. Fernand Braudel supports the thesis that there was a general 100 per cent population growth throughout the Mediterranean basin in the sixteenth century, and Barkan claims that growth at the Ottoman end of the Mediterranean was even more dynamic. However, there is still need for specialized studies of Ottoman population and its flux in the sixteenth century.