Suraiya Faroqhi

The Ottoman centre versus provincial power-holders: an analysis of the historiography

Well into the 1970s the historiography of the Ottoman provinces allocated an inordinate amount of space to the spectacular rise and occasional rebellions of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century provincial power elite. The Ottoman conquest and control of vast territories depended to a large degree on the ability of the government to forge alliances with local power elites. Attempting to identify and categorise the provincial power-holders of the Ottoman Empire is a challenging undertaking. This is partly due to the fluidity of the borders between those who held formal administrative positions, such as members of the military and judiciary establishment on the one hand, and those who could wield influence through their positions within local society, known loosely as the ayan, on the other. The Ottoman governments views of local power-holders were at best ambivalent. Until the 1980s the historiography of the Ottoman Empire had emphasized the often conflict-ridden quality of relations between the central state and the provincial elites.

Camels, Wagons, and the Ottoman State in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

The history of Ottoman transportation as a whole still remains to be written. To date, scholars have concentrated mainly upon the institutional aspects of the problem. Thus Cengiz Orhonlu in his pioneering work has dealt with attempts on the part of the Ottoman administration to maintain street and road paving, establish ferryboat services, control river navigation, and ensure the safety of public roads. Boat traffic within Istanbul, which linked the different parts of the Ottoman capital and thus ensured their mutual integration, was also treated mainly from the Ottoman administrations point of view. 1 After Orhonlus untimely death, research into the institutional framework supporting Ottoman communications was continued by other scholars. Particularly the arrangements intended to supply official couriers with post-horses have recently been made the object of several monographs. 2

Pilgrims and sultans : the hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683

The pilgrimage to Mecca in pre-Ottoman times caravan routes caravan security the finances of the holy cities in praise of ruler and religion - public buildings in Mecca and Medina the pilgrimage as a matter of foreign policy the pilgrimage in economic and political contexts.

The development of the Anatolian urban network during the sixteenth century.

The authors use data from the tax registers of the Ottoman Empire to examine urban development in Anatolia during the sixteenth century. Some comparisons are made with nineteenth-century data. (ANNOTATION)

Vakif Administration in Sixteenth Century Konya

The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the administration and development of a medium-sized vakzf or pious foundation in sixteenth century Konya. In an area where fourteen percent of the dues produced by peasant farming were tied up in pious foundations 1), it is perhaps not without some interest to find out how these resources were administered and what they were used for. If we accept the fact that payments to the central government and to the vaktf, in money and in kind, ate up a large part of the surplus available to the peasantry, and if we accept that almost all of the income of the ruling group came directly or indirectly from agriculture, then we can see that an understanding of what became of the surplus is probably the most important prerequisite to an appreciation of the socio-economic structure of the Ottoman Empire. To find out how the surplus was used, it seems logical to follow it from its production stage, that is peasant agriculture, through its extraction, or the collection of dues, to its expenditure. From our sources it is obvious that the central administration controlled the

War and peace

Introduction Writing the history of Ottoman warfare and diplomacy from 1603 to 1838 is charting much unknown territory, and combating long-held assumptions about Ottoman obscurantism, paralysis and obstinacy in the face of defeat, shrinking borders and European incursion. In many ways, the era can be characterised by a slow, imperceptible tilting towards European-style diplomacy, as Ottoman bureaucrats came to terms with fixed borders and the potential power and sometimes debilitating limitations of negotiations, what J. C. Hurewitz long ago called ‘the Europeanization of Ottoman diplomacy’. The eighteenth century, in particular, saw a hundredfold increase in the use of diplomatic initiatives, including the sending of special envoys to Europe, increasing emphasis on foreign affairs in the bureaucracy, establishing permanent embassies in Europe in the latter part of the period under study, and the sometimes adroit, sometimes maladroit manipulation of the large and unruly European diplomatic community in Istanbul. Ottoman warfare is not as easy to characterise, as studies of so many of the major campaigns of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (and of the 1800s as well, for that matter) have yet to be undertaken from the Ottoman point of view, a striking lacuna for an empire whose single raison d’etre is almost invariably described in military terms. Much of the debate on military reform, or lack of it, in the Ottoman context has been influenced by western European historiography, which pits rational and progressive against religious and regressive societies, accounting for the spectacular success of the West and, by-the-by for the failure of the Ottomans to make the transition to a modern-style army.

Civilian Society and Political Power in the Ottoman Empire: A Report on Research in Collective Biography (1480–1830)

Prosopography, or collective biography, as this field of study is sometimes called by scholars dealing with periods later than Greek and Roman antiquity, is a relatively simple and unsophisticated research technique. Basically, it consists of assembling and comparing biographical data for all individuals belonging to a clearly circumscribed group of people. Frequently, but not necessarily, the individuals in question held public office of some kind. This technique recommends itself by the fact that it can be applied even to periods on which very little evidence is available, such as the Roman Republic But on a different level, prosopography can also contribute to our understanding of societies with a fairly rich documentation. Thus, quite a few items among the more recent literature cited by Lawrence Stone in his book on the causes of the seventeenth-century English revolution might be described at least in part upon prosopographical techniques. In the same vein, the research technique has been used by a number of scholars to shed some light upon the institutions and society of the Ottoman Empire.

Semi-autonomous forces in the Arab provinces

Stretching from Algiers to Basra, Aleppo to San’a, the Arab provinces constituted roughly half of the Ottoman Empire’s territory at its height. Although most of the inhabitants of this expanse shared a common language, they were not heirs to a single political culture. More than language, local political conditions and limits, imposed by geography, on communication and control proved decisive in determining an Arab province’s experience in the Ottoman centuries. We can construct a model, consisting of concentric zones radiating out from Istanbul, to represent the degree of assimilation of the Arab domains into the Ottoman provincial system. The inner zone consisted of provinces in Syria and Iraq which were closest to the Ottoman heartland of Anatolia. These were fully incorporated into the empire, and the full measure of Ottoman provincial governance was implemented there. Provinces further afield were governed by men sent out from Istanbul. But they typically relied on local political elites to fill the lower ranks of administration. The Arab cities on the outer circle of empire rarely had Ottoman governors. In their stead, local warlords ruled, although they also professed fealty to the sultan and collected taxes in his name. Given the diversity in conditions that existed in the Arab provinces, the local forces making for autonomy differed widely in their origins. Nonetheless, every Arab province witnessed the rise of political movements or personalities who challenged the sultan’s monopoly of power in the eighteenth century.

Political and diplomatic developments

Ottoman political history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is curiously under-researched. On the other hand, this sub-field of Ottoman studies was the first to receive systematic expert interest in Catholic and Protestant Europe. Moreover, Ottoman historiography also excelled in this domain. Paul Rycaut, Demetrius Cantemir, Mouradgea d’Ohsson and even the young Joseph von Hammer all treated the empire as a contemporary polity with a meaningful and functioning administrative structure. They tended to contextualise political and diplomatic affairs by reference to military matters, while military men such as Raimondo Montecuccoli or Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli discussed military problems while also showing an informed interest in politics and administration. Cantemir and Marsigli, who were of Ottoman extraction or else had spent a considerable amount of time in Istanbul, often shared a sentiment expressed by Ottoman chroniclers and political authors – namely, that the empire was in a state of decline. This idea, partly boosted by the influence of Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1782–8), was to fascinate Western authors; unfortunately it was to prove detrimental to their understanding of and interest in the post-sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire. Only in the last few decades has the paradigm of ‘Ottoman decline’ been subjected to criticism. This debate has been informed by neo-Marxism, post-linguistic-turn social science, modernisation studies and, above all, the debate triggered by Edward W Said’s Orientalism (1978); however, Said himself had considerable difficulty when it came to dealing with the Ottomans.

Agriculture and Rural Life in the Ottoman Empire (ca 1500-1878)

When introducing this survey, it is necessary to say a word of justification about the time limits adopted. The year 1500 has been selected as an approximate starting point, because only during the reign of Sultan Bayezid II (1481-1512) do Ottoman tax registers become frequent enough to allow even approximate conclusions with respect to agricultural production. However when dealing with certain regions of the Empire, we need to adopt an even later starting point. After all, part of this paper deals with ‘Syria’ in the broad sense of the word, that is, the region bordering the eastern Mediterranean between Anatolia and Egypt; and this area was only conquered by the Ottomans in 1516. As to Tunisia, to which the present paper will also refer, this country only became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1533 or 1570.