Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (14 page)

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
children 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.”