Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (15 page)

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.

Guilds were organized principally to manufacture consumer
goods in demand by the population, regulate prices and competition, and
facilitate the relationship between various trades and the government.
Additionally, guilds provided assistance “to craftsmen to open shops, gave
money to the sick, and took on the costs of burial if a member died.” They also
“paid the wage of guards and firemen, gave alms to beggars in the bazaars, and
made sure that the master craftsmen gave proper training to their apprentices,
for only by qualifying as masters could the latter open a workshop of their
own.”

The Ottoman central government frequently intervened in the
daily affairs of the guilds. The state “dominated both production and
distribution, determining even the range of profits permitted to a craftsman.” With
participation and support of guild masters, Ottoman state officials fixed the
number of guilds in every city and disallowed the establishment of new shops
and workplaces. The guilds were not organized to produce for “a continuously
expanding market,” and they could not enrich themselves at the expense of the
consumer. They manufactured primarily for the population of their city and its
neighboring towns and villages, and every effort was made by state officials to
protect “both the consumer and the producer” by keeping “the consumption and
production balanced.”

Given “the weakness of the urban police force,” the Ottoman
central government also “used the guilds as a means of controlling the urban
population.” In addition, the guilds procured services needed by the army and
navy, and secured payment of taxes and dues. A significant number of craftsmen
were drafted into military campaigns. This was done because “to supply the
soldiers with boots, coats and tents; the necessary investments had to be made
by the relevant guilds.” Some guilds, such as those of rowers, oarsmen,
waterfront workers, and boatmen who “linked Uskudar, Galata, and the Bosphorus
villages to Istanbul,” were recruited by the Ottoman navy to work at the
dockyards.

The daily activities of urban guilds were inextricably
linked to the surrounding villages and rural communities, which supplied the
craftsmen with such raw materials as wool, hides, cotton, grain, and other
goods. At times, the urban manufacturers purchased these basic materials from
peasant farmers. In return, on rare occasions, peasants from nearby villages
came to the town’s craftsmen to purchase the textiles they used for new clothes
at weddings and other important ceremonies. These direct commercial exchanges
between the urban guilds and rural communities were rare, however, because
peasants “produced most of the goods they needed at home, while many artisans
bought through their guilds and/or from tax-farmers, and thus did not do their
purchasing directly from villages.” In the majority of cases, peasants did not
earn sufficient cash to buy finished goods from urban craftsmen. The little
cash they earned was paid as tax to government officials. The artisans, on the
other hand, did not produce to serve the needs of peasant farmers. Their
principal customers were the members of the ruling elite, the merchants, and
other craftsmen.

Each guild “had a fixed number of members, and if one died,
his place went to his son, or a travelling trader would buy the tools and wares
of the deceased, and the money would go to his family.” Every guild was
distinguished by its own internal structure, code of conduct, and attire. Ottoman
guilds were inherently hierarchical, and each possessed its own organization.
Customarily, however, its members were divided into the three grades of
masters, journeymen, and apprentices. A very old and well-established conduct
code obligated the journeymen to treat their masters with utmost respect and
obedience, while the apprentices were expected to display reverence and
deference to both the journeymen and masters. Within the guild hierarchy, the
apprentices constituted the lowest category. Each apprentice had two comrades;
one master teacher; and one
pir,
or the leader of his order. The
apprentice learned his craft and trade under the close supervision of a master.
Members of each guild also met at
derviş
lodges where the masters
of the trade taught the apprentices the ethical values and standards of the
organization. After several years of hard work, when it was decided that the
apprentice was qualified in his craft, a public ceremony was organized where he
received an apron from his master. The apron-passing ceremony involved
festivities and performances: orators recited poems, singers sang, and dancers
danced, while jugglers, rope-dancers, sword swallowers, conjurers, and acrobats
performed and showed off their skills.

The
kethüda,
or the senior officer and spokesperson
of the guild, collected taxes for the state and represented his craft in all
dealings and negotiations with the central government. Moreover, each guild had
a
şeyh
who acted as the spiritual and religious head of the craft
guild. Among Ottoman guilds, competition and profiteering were viewed as
dishonorable. Those who attracted customers by praising and promoting their
products, and worked primarily to accumulate money, were expelled from the
guild. The craftsman was respected for the beauty and artistic quality of his
work and not his ability to market his products and maximize his profit. Not
surprisingly, traders did not display signs and advertisements to draw the
attention of buyers to their business. They merely displayed the pieces and
products, which the buyer requested, and did not bargain over the price.

An important characteristic of the Ottoman guild system was
the highly specialized nature of every branch of craft and industry. There were
no shops that sold a variety of goods. If one needed to purchase a pair of
shoes, he would go to the shoemaker section of the bazaar, and if his wife
needed a new saucepan, kettle, or coffeepot, she sent her husband or servant to
the street where the coppersmiths were located.

Metal workers in a factory in
Izmir.

IHTISAB AND MUHTASIB

All Ottoman guilds abided by the traditional rules, which
had been set down in the manuals of the semireligious fraternities (
futuwwa)
,
guild certificates, and various imperial edicts (
fermans
). Specific laws
and regulations (
ihtisab)
governed public morals and commercial
transactions. All guilds were obligated to follow and respect these rules,
which included the right to fix prices and set standards for evaluating the
quality of goods that would be sold by tradesmen. Negotiations between the
representatives of the central government and the guild masters determined the
prices of goods and the criteria for judging the quality of a product. The
state involved itself in this process to ensure the collection of taxes from
each guild and to support the enforcement of the
ihtisab
laws and
regulations.

A market inspector, or a
muhtasib,
and his officers
were responsible for enforcing public morals and the established rules.
Strolling purposefully through the markets, they apprehended violators and
brought them to face the local
kadi
(religious judge). They enforced the
sentence handed down from the
kadi
by flogging or fining the violators.
According to Islamic traditions and practices, the
muhtasib
dealt
primarily with “matters connected with defective weights and measures,
fraudulent sales and non-payment of debts.” Commercial knavery “was especially
within his [the
muhtasib
’s] jurisdiction, and in the markets he had
supervision over all traders and artisans.” In addition to his police duties,
he also performed the duties of a magistrate. He could try cases summarily only
if the truth was not in doubt. As soon as a case involved claims and
counterclaims and “the evidence had to be sifted and oaths to be administered,”
disputes were referred to the
kadi.
The
muhtasib
was also the
official responsible for stamping certain materials, “such as timber, tile or
cloth, according to their standard and [he] prohibited the sale of unstamped
materials.”

A European observer who visited the Ottoman Empire at the
beginning of the 17th century described one form of punishment applied by the
muhtasib:
“Sometimes a cheat is made to carry around a thick plank with a hole cut in the
middle, so his head can go through it . . . Whenever he wants to rest, he has
to pay out a few aspers [silver coins]. At the front and back of the plank hang
cowbells, so that he can be heard from a distance. On top of it lies a sample
of the goods with which he has tried to cheat his customers. And as a
supposedly special form of mockery, he is made to wear a German hat.” As the
official responsible for the maintenance and preservation of public morals, the
muhtasib
had to ensure that men did not consort with women in public,
and it was his duty to identify and punish bad behavior, particularly stealing,
drunkenness, and wine drinking in public. A thief who was caught red-handed
would be nailed by his ears and feet to the open shutter of the shop he had
tried to rob. He was left in the same state for two days without food or water.
The
muhtasib
could take action against violations and offenses only if
they had been committed in public. He did not have the right to enter a house
and violate the privacy of a family.

BATHHOUSES

A “key resource of any Muslim city was its public baths.” A
“city was not considered to be a proper city by Muslim travelers in the
pre-modern period unless it had a mosque, a market, and a bathhouse.” Most “Ottoman
cities had a public bathhouse in every neighborhood,” which “provided not only
an opportunity for cleanliness but also a public space for relaxation and
entertainment.” This was “especially true for women, as men were allowed to
socialize in the coffee houses and public markets.”

As early as the 14th century, the North African traveler
Ibn Battuta observed that in Bursa, the Ottoman ruler Orhan had built two
bathhouses, “one for men and the other for women,” which were fed by a river of
“exceedingly hot water.” At bathhouses, or hammams, men had their “beards
trimmed or their hair cut,” while women “had their skin scrubbed, their feet
briskly massaged, and the whites and yolks of eggs . . . pressed around their
eyes to try to erase any wrinkles.” In its “steam-filled rooms and private
suites, young masseurs pummeled and oiled their clients as they stretched out
on the hot stones.”

With the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottomans introduced
their public baths to the peoples they had conquered. Hammams that received
their water from aqueducts were constructed in many towns. Some of these baths
were attached to the bazaars, where merchants, artisans, and shopkeepers were
attended by serving-boys. Salonika’s Bey Hammam, where visitors could still
wash themselves until the 1960s, is one of the outstanding examples of early
Ottoman culture and architecture.

Having recognized the benefits of cleanliness and to avoid
a needless trip to a public bath, the rich and the powerful built their own
private baths at home. Many “families allowed their relatives and retainers to
use” their private hammam, eliminating any need to use public baths. Despite
this development, the public baths remained popular among the masses who could
not afford building their own private bathhouse.