Travel and Artisans in the Ottoman Empire: Employment and Mobility in the Early Modern Era 9780755608157, 9780857725134

It has often been assumed that the subjects of the Ottoman sultans were unable to travel beyond their localities – since

227 30 9MB

English Pages [319] Year 2014

Report DMCA / Copyright

DOWNLOAD PDF FILE

Table of contents :
Cover
Copyright
Contents
List of Maps
Introduction
ELITE TRAVELLERS
1. What an Ottoman ambassador might find out in Vienna
2. Material culture in Latinate Europe: as reported by eighteenth-century Ottoman ambassadors
3. ‘Seeking refuge in the Sultan’s shadow’: asylum seekers on Ottoman territory
4. Evliya Çelebi’s tales of Cairo’s guildsmen
5. Ottoman travellers in Venice
ORDINARY PEOPLE AND THEIR PRODUCTS ON THE MOVE
6. Keepsakes and trade goods from seventeenth-century Mecca
7. Entering and leaving the Empire’s industrious core: Bursa and its textiles
8. ‘Just passing through’: travellers and sojourners in mid-sixteenth-century Üsküdar
9. Mostly fugitives: the trials and tribulations of slaves in sixteenth-century Üsküdar
10. The adventures of Tunisian fez-sellers in eighteenth-century Istanbul
11. Controlling borders and workmen, all in one fell swoop: from Istanbul to Hotin in 1716
STAYING PUT
12. Selling sweetmeats: Istanbul in the mid-eighteenth century
13. Where to make and sell cheap textiles in eighteenth-century Istanbul: a buyer’s guide
14. In quest of their daily bread: artisans of Istanbul under Selim III (r. 1789–1807
Conclusion: Movement into the Ottoman capital: some desiderata
Dramatis Personae
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Recommend Papers

Travel and Artisans in the Ottoman Empire: Employment and Mobility in the Early Modern Era
 9780755608157, 9780857725134

  • 0 0 0
  • Like this paper and download? You can publish your own PDF file online for free in a few minutes! Sign Up
File loading please wait...
Citation preview

‘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

links to page 6 in the text and "10 way YOU can help save the environment page 10" links to page 10 in the text.

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).

Faroqhi_Prelims.indd i

1/11/2014 12:40:55 PM

Faroqhi_Prelims.indd ii

1/11/2014 12:40:55 PM

Travel and Artisans in the Ottoman Empire Employment and Mobility in the Early Modern Era

Suraiya Faroqhi

*•Mrm‹kZW mu ”ª|g M§ 4D•Šm‹ J x ’W  0DrZt .xDWU xuWxu