by Mehrdad Kia
Despite their diverse population, the urban centers of the Ottoman Empire were known for “the absence of capital crimes” and some of “the best conducted people.” Janissaries’ patrols “ensured that crime was kept to a minimum and the streets were almost deserted after dark, the silence was broken only by the cries of the night watchmen.” Those “who had to go out of for any reason were obliged by law to carry a flare.” A European observer who visited Istanbul in 1836 noted that the Ottoman capital, “with a population of six hundred thousand souls,” had a police force of “one hundred fifty men,” which was mostly for show rather than use. From dusk the streets were “silent,” save when one was “awakened by the footfalls of some individual” who passed, “accompanied by his servant bearing a lantern, on an errand of business or pleasure.” Without “these lanterns, no one could stir” as the streets of the Istanbul and other large urban centers of the empire were not lighted and properly paved, making a walk in the dark dangerous. If occasionally “some loud voice of dispute or some ringing of laughter” scared “the silence of the night,” it was “sure to be the voice or the laughter of a European,” for the “Turk” was “never loud, even in his mirth, a quiet internal chuckle” was “his greatest demonstration of enjoyment.”
A Turkish apartment in the Fanar (Phanar). William H. Bartlett. From Julie Pardoe, The Beauties of the Bosphorus (London: 1839).
OTTOMAN CONQUEST AND URBANIZATION
In Istanbul and other major urban centers of the empire, Ottoman conquest introduced a high degree of Islamization to everyday life. Ottoman sultans introduced their faith and decorated the newly conquered cities with palaces, mosques, soup kitchens, schools, bathhouses, and fountains. These buildings and their majestic designs were replicated in provincial capitals around the empire.
Ottoman sultans were great builders, and Ottoman architects left a wide array of monuments, which serve as a testimony to their support for urbanization and economic prosperity. Indeed, architecture was “the most visible manifestation of Ottoman genius,” not only in Anatolia, where the majority of the Turkish-speaking population resided but also throughout the Balkans and the Arab lands.
The greatest of all Ottoman architects was Sinan (1489/1490–1578). As the chief architect of Süleyman the Magnificent, Selim II, and Murad III, Sinan designed his first architectural masterpiece in 1543, following the death of Prince Mehmed, one of the Süleyman’s sons. The complex, built between 1543 and 1548, was named Şehzade (Prince). Sinan used Aya Sofya, which was built with a central dome supported by two semi-domes, as his model. His plan for the Şehzade complex was centered on a central dome supported by four semi-domes. Sinan’s next giant project was the design and construction of the Süleymaniye Mosque. The construction of the mosque began in 1550 and ended in 1557. This magnificent building, set on a hill overlooking the Istanbul harbor, still dominates the city’s skyline. The “crowning glory of Ottoman architecture” and Sinan’s “architectural paradise,” however, was the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne. This mosque was built between 1568 and 1574. The “four soaring, pencil-thin minarets of the Selimiye mosque” surrounds “its lofty central dome, 105 ft wide,” and the “honey-colored sandstone” contrasts “with the black lead of the roof and the turrets,” which surmounts “the eight buttresses supporting the dome.”
The Ottomans also built public fountains for ablutions, which every Muslim was required to perform before praying at a mosque, and for keeping the town supplied with water. These fountains were often located in front of a mosque, or at least in close proximity, so that Muslims could fulfill their obligation of maintaining their cleanliness before they entered a mosque to pray. Mosques and fountains were not, however, the only structures sponsored and built by Ottoman sultans. After the Ottomans conquered an urban center, the sultan ordered the damaged city walls repaired and instructed the new garrison commander to rebuild the fortress. The standard policy was “to return the city to its inhabitants and to restore it just as it had been before.” Damaged workshops, bathhouses, caravanserais, and tanneries were repaired. The commercially oriented people of the empire, particularly the Jews, Greeks, and Armenians, were encouraged to populate the newly conquered towns and cities.
When Mehmed II captured Constantinople, the city lay in ruin and the population had been decimated by naval blockade and warfare. The sultan did not, however, wish to rule over a city of ruins. According to the chronicler Aşikpaşazade, Mehmed II appointed a new city commandant and sent his agents to various provinces, declaring that “whoever wishes, let him come, and let him become owners of houses, vineyards and gardens in Istanbul,” and to whomever came, the Ottoman government gave what it had promised, but even this act of generosity was not sufficient to repopulate the city. Thus, the sultan
gave orders to dispatch families, both rich and poor, from every province. The Sultan’s servants were sent with orders to Kadis and commandants of every province, and in accordance with their orders conscribed and brought very many families. Houses were also given to these new arrivals, and this time the city began to be repeopled . . . They began to build mosques. Some of them built dervish convents, some of them private houses, and the city returned to its previous state. . . . The sultan built eight medreses with a great cathedral mosque in their midst, and facing the mosque a fine hospice and a hospital, and at the side of the eight medreses, he built eight more small medreses, to house the students.
The Ottoman state frequently moved Turcoman tribal groups from Anatolia and settled them in the newly captured towns and villages of the Balkans. Jews, Greeks, and Armenians also followed Ottoman armies and opened businesses in the newly conquered towns. The new settlers injected new blood into the urban economies, increased the population, and diversified the ethnic, linguistic, and religious composition of the region. In these new Ottoman administrative centers, government officials, members of the religious classes, commanders of the army, and soldiers of the local garrison performed the daily work of running a vast empire. These officials included government agents who supervised tax collection; a kadi, or a judge in a religious court; the sipahis and their warden; the janissaries and their commander; the wardens of the fortress; the market inspector; the toll collector; the poll-tax official; the customs inspector; the chief engineer; the chief architect; the mayor; as well as the local notables and dignitaries. Always with the new Muslim populations came the ulema of the Hanafi School of Islamic law, who acted as the chief muftis, or the officially appointed interpreters of the Islamic law. The influx of Ottoman officials, administrators, and army officers, as well as new settlers from Anatolia, created a new Muslim majority in many urban centers of the Balkans. By 1530, Muslims constituted 90 percent of the population of Larissa in Thessaly (Greece), 61 percent in Serres (northern Greece), 75 percent in Monastir and Skopje (Macedonia), and 66 percent in Sofia (Bulgaria).
Court of the Mosque of Eyoub (Eyub). William H. Bartlett. From Julie Pardoe, The Beauties of the Bosphorus (London: 1839).
Fountain and market at Tophannè (Tophane). William H. Bartlett. From Julie Pardoe, The Beauties of the Bosphorus (London: 1839).
VAKIFS
In addition to the sultan, Ottoman officials, dignitaries, and local notables built and endowed new mosques, schools, bathhouses, bridges, fountains, and derviş convents that came to dominate the urban landscape. The speed by which these new buildings were completed, suggested not only plentiful supply of skilled labor and highly developed architectural traditions, but the sufficient and ready means necessary to fund such projects through to completion more reliably and much more quickly than European states could manage at this time.
The true vehicle of Ottoman urban renewal was the pious foundation, or the vakif. By foregoing the revenues from rents on shops and land and instead directing them into a pious foundation, the founder of a vakif relinquished his ownership of the property and its resulting income, but in return secured blessings in his own afterlife and in the earthly lives of his chi
ldren and heirs. Ottoman sultans and their government officials built mosques, schools, hospitals, water installations, roads, and bridges, as well as “institutions, which provided revenue for their upkeep, such as an inn, market, caravanserai, bathhouse, mill, dye house, slaughter house or soup kitchen” supported by vakifs. The charitable institutions were “usually grouped around a mosque, while the commercial establishments stood nearby or in some suitably active place.” Regardless of their physical location, they played an important role in the civic life of the city by providing essential public services as well as offering goods and services for sale. Vakifs also financed Sufi convents, as well as water wells and fountains that kept the city alive and provided water for ablution. They also fostered trade by funding the construction and maintenance of bridges and ferries.
BAZAARS AND BEDESTANS
Outside the imperial palace, urban life focused on the marketplace. Every “Ottoman city had a market district, known in Arabic as suq and in Turkish as çarşi where both the manufacture and sale of goods were centralized.” This was an important public space in any Ottoman city, and it was replicated across the empire. Markets served as the center for the people’s social and economic life. The majority of large urban markets also “had an inner market, known as bedestan, which could be closed off at night or in times of trouble.” To attract merchants and craftsmen to their domain, Ottoman sultans built covered markets with bedestans in the cities they conquered. These markets, as well as inns or caravanserais, “served as lodgings for merchants” who “stored their valuable goods in special vaults reserved for them” at “these establishments.” At times, bedestans were used for storing “grains and other agricultural goods collected as product-tax by the representatives of the central administration.” Bedestans also “included shops where local and long-distance merchants exchanged their goods.” The large covered markets were usually surrounded by wide streets, gardens, and running springs on all sides.
The covered bazaar of Istanbul (kapali çarşisi), located in the center of the old city, was a “city within a city, containing arcaded streets, numerous lanes and alleys, squares and fountains, all enclosed within high protecting walls, and covered by a vaulted roof studded with hundreds of cupolas, through which penetrated a subdued light.” One 19th-century European visitor explained that the covered bazaar was “composed of a cluster of streets, of such extent and number as to resemble a small covered town, the roof being supported by arches of solid masonry,” with “a narrow gallery, slightly fenced by a wooden rail,” occasionally connecting “these arches.”
The kapali çarşisi was designed and developed by Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, who “built more than 800 shops in the central location that was to become the covered bazaar, mainly shops of cloth merchants and tailors.” By the beginning of the 18th century, the bazaar contained three thousand shops, and by the end of the 19th century, four thousand. Aside from shops, the covered bazaar had its own mosque, fountains, public bathhouse, school, coffeehouses, and warehouses. Shoppers could enter its 61 narrow streets and lanes through 18 gates. Those visiting the covered bazaar for the first time frequently got lost or confused.
Within the covered bazaar, there were distinct quarters and sections for each trade and craft. Manufacturers such as “goldsmiths, shoemakers, carpet merchants, and those who sold coats, furniture, jewelry, furs, cutlery, old clothes, cosmetics, hats, and almost any other kind of goods gathered together in their own sections of the bazaar.” The merchants and shopkeepers sat cross-legged on carpets in front of their shops and wore large turbans on their heads. Jewish, Greek, and Armenian traders and shopkeepers dressed and worked like Muslim merchants. Despite the best efforts of several religious sultans to prevent non-Muslim merchants from wearing the same clothes as the Muslim merchants, the Christian and Jewish traders continued to dress and act like their Muslim counterparts.
Outside kapali çarşisi, there were also specialized bazaars where particular goods or products were exchanged or sold. Thus, the fish market of Istanbul offered a wide variety of fish taken, with net or line, by fishermen of the Black Sea, Sea of Marmara, the Golden Horn, and the Bosphorus, while the Egyptian Market served as the great depot of spices and drugs. Here the merchants sold such goods and products as “cinnamon, gunpowder, rabbit fat, pine gum, peach-pit powder, sesame seeds, sarsaparilla root, aloe, saffron, liquorice root, donkey’s milk and parsley seeds, all to be used as folk remedies.”
Marketplaces and bazaars served as the centers of the city’s commercial life. Men of all nationalities and religious affiliations, along with veiled women, many attended by servants, bargained with merchants and shopkeepers. Although “the markets were largely a part of the male sphere of Ottoman society, women could be found there as well.” Indeed, “poor women and peasant women hawked produce they grew themselves or items they made, such as embroidered towels.” Other women, “most commonly Jews, acted as peddlers carrying wares in the upper-class neighborhoods, visiting the harems and offering goods to women who were barred by social custom from going to the public markets themselves.” Among “the wealthy classes, it was not unusual for women” to own shops. In “such cases, however, social custom did not allow the women to deal directly with men from outside their families,” and they were forced to leave “the actual daily running of the business” to “a male relative.”
Great Avenue in the tchartchi (covered bazaar). William H. Bartlett. From Julie Pardoe, The Beauties of the Bosphorus (London: 1839).
A scene in the tchartchi (covered bazaar). William H. Bartlett. From Julie Pardoe, The Beauties of the Bosphorus (London: 1839).
MERCHANTS AND GUILDS
In the Ottoman social hierarchy, the merchants and craftsmen stood below the members of the government and the ruling elite. They were required to dress in their own unique clothes and were prohibited from wearing the garments of the ruling classes. In all Ottoman cities, local manufacturers were organized into guilds that produced consumer goods and handled local trade, while wealthy and well-connected merchants controlled long-distance commerce.
MERCHANTS
There were two categories of merchants in the Ottoman Empire: those who functioned as local traders, buying and selling goods produced by the guilds, and the tüccar or bazirgan, who were involved in long-distance and overseas trade. The local traders formed a distinct category within the guilds and were, therefore, subject to the same regulations as the handicraftsmen. Those who were involved in long-distance trade were not subject to guild regulations. Though not part of the ruling elite, the wealthy merchants who connected the markets of the Ottoman Empire with those of Europe and “the Orient” enjoyed enormous power and influence among government officials, many of whom invested in international trading ventures.
The tüccar performed several important functions in the Ottoman society and economy. The “most important of these was the distribution of raw material, food, and finished goods throughout the empire” and beyond. In addition to trade within the empire, the tüccar imported and exported a variety of luxury goods. All these commercial activities resulted in significant contributions of customs and tolls to the imperial treasury. The tüccar involved themselves in large-scale exchange of goods or, in the case of luxuries, items of unusually high value.
In the Ottoman society, the few existing industries were controlled either by the state or the guilds, and cash was concentrated in the palace and among the small ruling elite. Those who had amassed large fortunes in gold and silver invested in commercial enterprises organized by wealthy merchants. Palace officials, provincial governors and notables, as well as the powerful religious endowments, invested their money through the merchants in mudaraba, or in a commercial enterprise or major trading venture suitable for investment by a man of wealth and power.
Wealthy merchants, who mostly operated from a bedestan, traded in luxury goods such as “jewels, expensive textiles, spices, dyes, and perfumes.” Their fortunes in gold and
silver coin, as well as their ownership of slaves and high-quality textiles, were the outer signs of their enormous power and prestige in the urban communities of the Ottoman Empire. While “the merchants were among the most important and influential inhabitants of every city, they were also among the least popular.” Given “the profession and the understanding of the market economy” of these businessmen, “it is not amazing that they always aimed to maximize their profit involving speculative ventures of the simplest kind like buying cheap and selling high.” Because “this speculative activity included food and raw materials,” the merchants “were blamed for all shortages that occurred occasionally.” Their reputation and standing “sank even lower in the latter period when their wealth permitted them to go into such professions as tax farming, which was certainly very unpopular with the population at large.” Beginning in the second half of the 16th century, the power of the long-distance traders began to decline as European merchant ships came to dominate the overseas trade and as “families descended from kapikulu officers [slaves of the sultan serving as soldiers or administrative at the palace] gained control of tax-farming and began to dominate the towns, both socially and politically.”
Boutique et marchand turcs (c. 1880–1890). Merchants with an outside shop in Istanbul. Sebah and Joaillier.
GUILDS
In the Ottoman Empire, the craftsmen were organized into guilds. The manufacturers, shopkeepers, and small traders who were organized under the guild system were known as esnaf (plural of sinf). Trade guilds already existed in Constantinople at the time of the Ottoman conquest in 1453. The number of guilds increased significantly as the city was rebuilt and repopulated under Mehmed II and his successors. In the 17th century, the Ottoman writer Evliya Çelebi listed over one thousand guilds in the capital. He also wrote that there were nearly eighty thousand craftsmen in Istanbul alone, “working in more than 23,000 shops and workshops, and divided up into 1,100 different professional groups.” Three centuries later, a foreign observer estimated the number of distinct trades and crafts in Istanbul at one thousand six hundred and forty.