Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire

by Mehrdad Kia

  A public khan (han). William H. Bartlett. From Julie Pardoe, The Beauties of the Bosphorus (London: 1839).

  PEASANTS

  The most fundamental social and economic unit in the Ottoman society was the peasant family. Owing to the lack of sufficient data, it is impossible to estimate the rural population of the Ottoman Empire, but the vast majority of the empire’s population lived and worked as peasant farmers in villages. A typical peasant family consisted of a husband, his wife, and their children, and often included married sons and grandchildren. A highly patriarchal family structure meant that the husband organized the household and served as the ultimate arbiter of its resources and disputes. The state recognized him as the household’s taxpayer. In Ottoman survey registers, taxation for each household was listed according to the name of the husband who represented his family.

  Under the Ottoman system, “all arable land belonged to the public treasury of the Muslim community” and “in its name to the caliph or the ruler.” Because all agricultural land belonged to the sultan and was viewed by the state as crown land (miri), the central government enjoyed the inherent right to organize, manage, and supervise all peasant landholdings, along with the entire agrarian society and economy. Miri land did not comprise all agricultural land in the empire, but rather areas used as fields and open to the cultivation of grain. Orchards and gardens did not fall into this category. Large masses of people in the Ottoman Empire depended on subsistence economy for their livelihoods, and in particular, on wheat-barley cultivation. To avoid shortages and famines, the state “felt the need to control field agriculture and grain cultivation.” Indeed, “Ottoman law codes strictly forbid the conversion of fields into orchards and gardens.”

  The state defined “landed property,” as well as “agricultural force as revenue and subsistence resources,” rejecting the definition of land and labor as “commodities privately owned and freely exchangeable in the market for purposes of profit maximization.” The two exceptions to miri, were mülk, or privately owned, and vakif, or lands supporting religious endowments where the revenue was used for pious and charitable purposes. The ulema, who were “the principal beneficiaries of vakif grants[,] acted in the capacity of administrators, especially of kadis.”

  According to one source, in 1528, about 87 percent of all cultivable land in the empire was miri. While the majority of land belonged to the state, the peasant farmer who tilled it had the status of a hereditary tenant, and, in return for his work, he enjoyed a usufructuary right. The peasant’s right to cultivate the land passed from father to son, but he could not sell the land, “grant it as a gift, or transfer it without permission.” The head of a peasant family could, however, hold a gift, or a piece of agricultural land varying in size from 60 to 150 dönüms (940 square meters, or 3,084 square feet), large enough to support his family. After the death of the head of the household, his sons worked jointly on the gift, since it could not be broken up. Above all, “state rules relating to the organization of agricultural production sought to maintain the integrity of the family farms that constituted the units of subsistence and revenue production.” In the Ottoman domains, where labor “was scarce and land was plenty, the need to keep the peasants on the land, to prevent peasant flights,” and to ensure the “production of subsistence crops” were the major concerns of the central government.

  In the traditional Ottoman land tenure system, the peasant household was required to pay a tithe to the sipahi (the cavalryman holding a timar in return for military service), who acted as the representative of the central government and resided in the district. Grains “in the form of tithe collected in kind” represented the “primary source of revenue” for the sipahi. In addition, the peasant household paid the sipahi 22 akçes (silver coins) as the annual tax collected from all families holding a gift.

  The peasant farmer was not allowed to leave the land and relocate to a different village or town. The sipahi did everything in his power to keep the peasants working on the land, because their flight reduced his income, as well as the revenue that he was required to send to the central government. If a peasant farmer fled the land, the sipahi had 15 years to compel him to return, but he could not force it without a decree from a kadi or a religious judge. If the peasant farmer settled in a town and entered a craft, he had to pay the sipahi a tax, which was slightly more than one gold ducat a year.

  BUILDING HOMES

  In most rural communities, houses were built in close proximity to one another. The peasant family did not live in the middle of a large field, but resided inside the village and only went out to the field in the morning. Living together provided security and protection; it allowed the community to organize a united front against threats and attacks from outside forces. Other villagers, particularly one’s neighbors, also cooperated in building new homes, adding new sections to existing homes, and harvesting crops.

  The material used to build a house was determined by the environmental setting and the availability of basic supplies. In dry climate regions, such as central and eastern Anatolia, Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, where wood was scarce, houses were built of mud brick, which was manufactured by pouring a solution of wet mud and straw into a wooden form that was then left in place while the mud partially dried, usually for one day, then removed as the brick dried completely. The bricks were then left on the ground for another week before they were used in the construction of the house. Aside from environmental factors, the cost of building material made mud brick an attractive material for building homes. Mud brick was made of earth and it was therefore extremely cheap. Mud brick walls also kept village houses cool during summer. On the negative side, mud brick easily broke when earthquakes struck the Anatolian plateau, much of which sat on an earthquake zone. Thus, Ankara, situated in central Anatolia, was significantly damaged, and numerous small towns and villages were destroyed in the earthquake of 1668, while another earthquake in 1688 destroyed Izmir and surrounding rural communities.

  A house roof in Anatolia began with poplar poles held firmly in place by mud brick mortar. Woven reeds were then laid to cover the poles, followed by a layer of straw or other material that would produce a flat surface. Onto this surface the villagers poured large quantities of the mud mortar, followed by a layer of clay soil to repel water. They then stamped the roof by foot or rolled a cylindrical stone across it to create a hard, flat surface capable of shedding water and protecting the house from heat.

  Peasant families in Anatolia lived in cottages, which contained very little furniture, except “a scanty supply of bedding and a few rugs, stools, and cooking utensils.” The “function of today’s wooden furniture was taken up by the building itself,” with “seats, beds, and storage” built “into the walls of the house, made of the same brick that formed the walls.” If the household budget allowed or if the family themselves were weavers, rugs were used to cover the floors. The walls of some peasant homes featured a divan or rug and cushioned-covered outcropping that served as both a seat and, if wide enough, as a bed. More often, however, family members slept on the floor. Bedding was stored away during the day and only brought out at night. Mattresses beneath and quilts above provided the sleeper with warmth and comfort. This form of bedding and sleeping was not confined to the peasant households in the rural communities of the empire. As late as the second half of the 19th century, high government officials and their families who lived in large and spacious homes in the posh neighborhoods of Istanbul also used “Turkish beds,” which were “laid out every evening on the carpet and gathered up in the morning and put away.” During winter, peasant families in Anatolian villages kept warm with fireplaces built into the walls or with mangals, braziers that held hot coals retrieved from the fireplace. Wooden shutters, along with textiles and animal skins, hung over windows and doors to keep out chill drafts. For the most part, however, clothing provided much of the warmth Ottoman villagers enjoyed during the winter months. Household goods consisting of “one poor cookin
g-pot, wooden spoon, a drinking cup of leather or wood, and a poor mattress of just a single coverlet were sufficient, as the ground served for bedstead, table and stools; nor had the Turks any need of a troop of cooks and scullions to prepare their meals and wash their dishes, as they ate sour curds mixed with bread and water, or fresh curds and cheese and in place of bread they had unleavened cakes baked on cinders.”

  In the Balkans and the Black Sea region, where the rate of rainfall was greater and the supply of trees more plentiful, wood was widely used in construction of homes. The rainy climate, however, forced villagers to use “sloped roofs” that “were covered with wood shingles or ceramic tiles.” In many parts of the Balkans, homes were built of stones collected from the beds of rivers. In contrast to peasant houses in Anatolia that were one-story high and a simple structure in which the cattle were also housed, stone houses in the Balkans were usually “two storied, with a stone bottom floor and a wooden top floor, with a sloped roof.” 166 The windows were small apertures, high up in the walls, and were sometimes grated with wood. There were no chimneys, but in the center of the roof was an opening to disperse the smoke from a fire pit that burned in the middle of the room. In front of the house was an enclosure, either of thorns or a mud wall, that secured the privacy of the dwelling. If they could afford it, the family built an outer chamber, where the head of household received his visitors and guests.

  In Egypt, some of the peasant dwellings comprised two or more apartments, and a few were even two stories high. In the homes of the peasants in Lower Egypt, one of these apartments contained an oven at the farthest point from the entrance, which occupied the whole width of the room. It resembled “a wide bench or seat,” was “about breast high,” and was “constructed of brick and mud; the roof arched within, and flat on the top.” The inhabitants of the house, who seldom had any blankets or quilts during the winter, slept on the top of the oven, having already lighted a fire within it. At times, only the husband and wife enjoyed “this luxury,” and the children slept on the floor. The rooms had “small apertures high up in the walls, for the admission of light and air, sometimes furnished with a grating of wood.” The roofs of Egyptian peasant dwellings were made out of “palm branches and palm leaves, or of millet stalks, laid upon rafters of the trunk of the palm, and covered with a plaster of mud and chopped straw.” The furniture consisted of several mats to sleep on and “a few earthen vessels, and a hand-mill to grind the corn.” In many Egyptian villages, large square pigeon houses were built on the roofs of peasant huts “with crude brick, pottery, and mud.”

  In every Ottoman village, building homes demanded teamwork and cooperation among all members of the family, regardless of age and gender. The team often included members of the extended family who lived in the same village and even neighbors and friends who could lend their labor and architectural expertise. Villagers who had expertise in building particular parts of the house, such as roofs, were in especially high demand, and every effort was made to recruit them for the construction team. While the female members of the family did not usually participate in producing mud bricks and installing roofs, they played a central role in manufacturing the goods essential for household consumption. They wove rugs and carpets, and knitted new beddings and textile products.

  In Anatolia, the majority of villages were built at a fair distance from the main road, out of fear of traveling armies, bandits, and antigovernment rebels. Some villages relocated as a direct result of plagues, ongoing warfare, social instability, economic insecurity, and climate change. In times of political uncertainty, the absence of governmental authority forced many to abandon their villages altogether and move to a nearby town or another region.

  The mosque or the church, the coffeehouse or the teahouse, and the village store were the most important nonresidential buildings and were usually located in the center of the village. The representatives of the central government did not live in the village and there were no governmental buildings. The principal link between the village and the government was through the village headman, whose most important function was to act as the representative of his community. The headman was not a full employee of the village, but rather one of the most respected members of the community who, like other peasants, worked as a farmer and a herder. Even the barber, who gave haircuts at the village coffeehouse, set off for the fields soon after he had finished cutting the hair of his fellow villagers. Outside every rural community, a small area was designated as the village cemetery.

  Family members such as parents, children, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, and nieces, lived in the same village and were relied upon to help with work in the field. Marriages within the family, and particularly among cousins, strengthened and consolidated these close-knit social networks. When they were not in the field, men gathered at the village coffeehouse (or teahouse) at one another’s houses to discuss the latest news. While doing so they drank tea or coffee, and played chess or backgammon. Women visited each other’s homes, where they also partook in refreshments, discussed the latest happenings in the village, and watched each other’s children. To sell their agricultural products and to purchase some of the basic goods, which were not available in the village, peasant farmers traveled to the closest market towns.

  A neighborhood on the outskirts of Istanbul.

  AGRICULTURAL INSTRUMENTS AND THE PEASANT HOUSEHOLD

  In their writings, European travelers praised the Ottoman peasants, and particularly the Turkish peasant in Anatolia, for his “passionate attachment to land,” resignation to the will of God, loyalty to the sultan, honesty, sobriety, passive contentment, and cleanliness. Anatolian peasants wore coarse cloaks (aba), headgears of varying shapes and forms, and rude sandals on their feet. They began and ended each day with a cup of coffee or tea and a puff on a tobacco pipe. Into their fields, they led yoked bulls, oxen, and buffalo decorated with gilt horns and silken saddlecloths and covers. The most basic means of agricultural production was “a wooden plow pulled by a pair of oxen.” Since a pair of oxen acted as the tractor of traditional agriculture, a peasant who lost his animal could become destitute and only be rescued if the government showed mercy and understanding by providing a “tax amnesty.”

  The instruments of agricultural production and the crops that were grown in Anatolia during the long reign of the Byzantine Empire did not change under Ottoman rule. The plow pulled by a pair of oxen or buffalo was used during cultivation of crops such as wheat, barley, oats, vetch, millet, and rye. These crops were sown and reaped, utilizing the same methods that had been used under Byzantine rule. Vegetables and fruits were also grown in small gardens on the banks of rivers and streams, and on the outskirts of villages and towns.

  The foundation of agricultural production was the peasant household, which consisted of a man, his wife, and their children. According to the traditional division of labor in the villages of Anatolia, men were expected to organize “the ploughing, sowing, and harvesting,” as well as building homes, going to the market towns, dealing with government officials, and representing the family in its interactions with other families. All other functions such as “child rearing, feeding and sustaining the family and tending the crops and the animals” were “the province of women.” This division of work, which assigned “a woman’s sphere of control” to “inside of the house” and a man’s to outside, “made men and women absolutely dependent on each other.” Men “did not cook or care for babies,” and they needed wives or daughters to care for them, while women did not deal with the representatives of the government or transport crops to a market town, and they “needed a husband, brother, or son to care” for them. The traditional rural family structure was patriarchal, and, as stated previously, the state recognized the father of the family as the representative of his household and the principal taxpayer. As the head of his family, he was also empowered to organize his household as a production unit, assigning tasks to his sons, both in the field and at the house. The patriar
chal nature of the peasant family was best demonstrated by the fact that the central government confiscated the land of a woman whose husband had died and who did not have sons; the state would then transfer it to another peasant household. If the widow had a son who had not reached the proper age for working on the field, the state recognized her as the taxpayer under the title of hive, or widow.

  RELIGION AND EDUCATION IN THE OTTOMAN VILLAGE

  Religion played a central role in bringing the residents of a village together. The most important responsibility of parents in a peasant household was to pass the values, traditions, customs, and practices of their religion to their children. Following the rules and the laws of Islam was essential for Muslim peasant farmers, while obeying the authority of the church and living in accordance with the teachings of Christianity was central to the belief system and the everyday life of Christian peasants. The overwhelming majority of the peasant population was illiterate and an ordinary villager who could not read his holy book for himself often accepted local customs and traditions, including some heterodox beliefs and practices, as integral parts of his religion. 194 The strict application of religious laws and local customs allowed the head of the household to exercise his authority without being challenged by his wife or children. Divine and traditional sanction also provided the father/husband with the authority to supervise relationships between sexes, particularly with respect to selecting a spouse for his children.