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‘In this study, Faroqhi once again demonstrates the enormous erudition and the unrivalled mastery of the sources that have made her the leading Ottoman historian of her generation. As always, she writes with an eye for anecdotal detail that makes the different stories of the travellers come alive.’ Professor Erik ZÜrcher, Leiden University, Author of Turkey: A Modern History ‘Suraiya Faroqhi has produced a mesmerizing study of a bustling empire on the move: ambassadors, wandering scholars and Please link this renegade mercenaries, nomads, pilgrims, merchants, with page 2 indervishes, the refugees, asylum seekers – and the great seventeenth-century travel text- so when the fanatic Evliya Çelebi. She has found space to chronicle the Turkish student's clickexperience on of such exotic places as Venice and Vienna and to survey this they go tosuch arcane trades as those of the firework manufacturers, scorpion page 2 in the catchers, text. donkey barbers and fez sellers. Her work, which is based Please do theon an unusually wide range of primary sources is also an important following for the contribution to the study of international relations, as well as a guide to recent and impressive research by Turkish historians in a dynamic rest of the contents and evolving field of study.’ list so " Carbon Robert footprints! page 6" Irwin, author of The Arabian Nights: A Companion
J A C K E T i m a g e : Ottoman Miniature showing the procession of the guilds on the occasion of the circumcision festival of the sons of Sultan Ahmed III, 1720. R. u. S. Michaud / akg-images. J acket De s i g n: www.vaguelymemorable.com
Suraiya Faroqhi
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Travel and Artisans in the Ottoman Empire
Suraiya Faroqhi is Professor of History at Istanbul Bilgi University and author of Artisans of Empire: Crafts and Craftspeople Under the Ottomans, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It, Pilgrims and Sultans and Subjects of the Sultan (all published by I.B.Tauris).
www.ibtauris.com
Travel and Artisans in the Ottoman Empire Employment and Mobility in the Early Modern Era
Suraiya Faroqhi
It has often been assumed that the subjects of the Ottoman sultans were unable to travel beyond their localities, since peasants needed the permission of their local administrators before they could leave their villages. According to this view, only soldiers and members of the governing elite would have been free to travel. However, Suraiya Faroqhi’s extensive archival research shows that this was not the case; pious men from all walks of life went on pilgrimage to Mecca, slaves fled from their masters and craftspeople travelled in search of work. Most travellers in the Ottoman era headed for Istanbul in search of better prospects and even in peacetime the Ottoman administration recruited artisans to repair fortresses and sent them far away from their home towns. In this book, Suraiya Faroqhi provides a revisionist study of those artisans who chose – or were obliged – to travel and those who stayed predominantly in their home localities. She considers the occasions and conditions which triggered travel among the artisans, and the knowledge that they had of the capital as a spatial entity. She shows that even those craftsmen who did not travel extensively had some level of mobility and that the Ottoman sultans and viziers, who spent so much effort in attempting to control the movements of their subjects, could often only do so within very narrow limits. Challenging existing historiography and providing an important new revisionist perspective, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Ottoman history.
Suraiya Faroqhi is Professor of History at Istanbul Bilgi University, and the author of Artisans of Empire: Crafts and Craftspeople Under the Ottomans, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It, Pilgrims and Sultans and Subjects of the Sultan (all published by I.B.Tauris).
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Travel and Artisans in the Ottoman Empire Employment and Mobility in the Early Modern Era
Suraiya Faroqhi
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