Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (16 page)

Regardless of its size, every public bathhouse consisted of
three sections: “the outer hall, in which bathing dress” was arranged; “the
cooling room, a well-cushioned and comfortable space, moderately heated and
intended for the temporary reception of the bathers”; and “the bath itself,
where the atmosphere” was “laden with sulfuric vapor.” The public baths were
open from eight in the morning to sunset with “men and women frequenting them
on alternate days.” In “many neighborhoods, there were separate bathhouses for
women.” For women, the bathhouse served as the best place to meet and “discuss
every subject of interest and amusement, whether politics, scandal, or news; to
arrange marriages and to prevent them, to ask and to offer advice, to display
their domestic supremacy, and to impart their domestic grievances but above all
to enjoy the noise, the hurry, and excitement,” which stood in sharp contrast
to “the calm and monotony of the harem.” Social custom strictly prohibited
women from patronizing coffeehouses and other venues available to men. For
women, the bathhouse became an escape from ordinary routine and offered a space
to socialize with friends while drinking coffee and being entertained by female
performers. Men “used the baths for many of the same reasons as women, but
unlike visits to coffeehouses, there was no hint of impropriety for those who
went to the baths to socialize.”

Before leaving the reception room and entering the main
bath, a large octagon hall with several fountains and numerous small cabinets,
the bather was supplied with a pair of wooden sandals, “raised several inches
from the floor.” Among the upper classes, these sandals were “objects of great
cost and luxury, the band by which” they were “secured across the instep being
frequently inlaid with jewels.” Once in the main hall, the bathers gathered
around the fountains that were supplied with both hot and cold water. In case
of women from wealthy families, each lady was attended by her servants and
slaves, “naked from waist upwards,” who poured water over the head and body of
their matron from a metal basin and gently combed her hair and rubbed her limbs
“by a hand covered with a small glove, or rather bag, woven of camel’s hair.” Once
the washing, combing, scrubbing, and massaging had been completed, the female
bather changed “her dripping garments for others” that awaited her near the
door of the hall and passed into the cooling room. Here, “reclining on mats and
carpets,” bathers rested for a long time “with their hair concealed beneath
heavy” towels and their bodies “wrapped closely in long white” robes. Once they
finally ventured back into the reception hall, they lay on sofas where an
attendant scattered perfumed water over their face and hands and folded them in
warm clothes. As the bather sank “into a luxurious slumber beneath a coverlet
of satin,” servants and slaves served them sweetmeat, sherbet, and other plates
of food.

Cooling room of a hammam.
William H. Bartlett. From Julie Pardoe,
The Beauties of the Bosphorus
(London:
1839).

Khammam, 1812, inside an Ottoman
hammam (bath) for women. Antoine L. Castellan.

HANS

Khan
or
han,
“a word of Persian origin”
designated “on the one hand a staging-post and lodging on the main
communication routes, on the other a warehouse, later a hostelry in the more
important urban centers.” The highway
han
offered safe lodging and
protection for travelers and their possessions in regions where nomads and
roaming bandits threatened security. The
han
provided services
indispensable for safe and successful overland commerce and was essential in
regions where food and water remained elusive.

While the highway
han
was “a staging-post and a
relay-station,” the urban
han
lay “at the end of a journey;” it was “a
depot, a place for commercial transaction and brief stay.” Aside from public
baths and coffeehouses, the urban
hans
provided open and free space for
social interaction between a variety of people from diverse ethnic and social
backgrounds. Muslims, Christians, and Jews; travelers, pilgrims, Sufi
wanderers, merchants, and traders from various Ottoman provinces and distant
lands, such as Central Asia, India, Iran, and North Africa; all converged at
these inns where they interacted without interference from any governmental or
religious authority.

Whether built along the main roads or in the midst of
cities, most
hans
and caravanserais were similarly designed. Invariably “built
of stone, they consisted of a two-story rectangle or square built around an
open courtyard in which there was a fountain.” 126 Many also “had a small
mosque in the corner of the structure facing Mecca.” A 17th-century French
priest Robert de Dreux described the Ottoman
hans
as large buildings (as
large as European churches), built by sultans “to lodge travelers, without care
for their station in life or religion, each one being made welcome, without
being obliged to pay anything in return.” Another European visitor wrote that
hans
were large quadrangular courts “surrounded by stone buildings, solidly
massed, and presenting much the appearance of the inner cloisters of a
monastery.”

Through a high arched doorway that remained chained, the
traveler entered the
han,
a quadrangle structure with a fountain in the
middle and surrounding stables for horses and camels, as well as storehouses
for the goods transported by caravans, and hearths and fires for the
convenience of visitors. Storage rooms on the ground floor allowed merchants to
store their goods and stable their animals, while themselves occupying
apartments on the
han’s
upper floor. The apartments on the lower floor
included “counting-houses for the merchants” and a coffeehouse.

The upper story of the
han
was “faced by an open
gallery, supported on arches” that stretched “round the entire square,” and was
“reached by exterior flights of stone steps, situated at two of its angles; and
from this gallery” opened “the store-rooms of the merchants,” which in the
first half of the 19th century, were “generally filled with bags of raw silk,
European cottons, bales of rich stuffs, tobacco, spices, arms—and in short, all
the most precious articles of Eastern traffic.” The articles mentioned here
were not found in every
han;
to the contrary, in the large urban centers
of the empire such as Istanbul, “the silk merchants” had “their own peculiar
rendezvous”; the Persians piled “their gold and silver stuffs apart”; and the
tobacco dealers sorted “their various tobaccos in a
caravanserai
of
their own; while the mere traveler, pilgrim, and dervish” took up “their abode
in common in very inferior”
hans.

Hans
were “closed two hours before midnight by
a pair of massive gates; beside one of which stood the little hut” that served
as the residence for the
han
keeper, or the
hanci,
who was “answerable
for all comers and goers after that time, until day-break; a precaution
rendered highly necessary by the immense value of the merchandise” that was “frequently
contained in these establishments.” The
hancis
were “universally patient
and good humored” men, “the very focus of all the news and gossip of the city.”
Witty, “crafty, and intelligent,” they were entrusted with protection of a
large volume of precious goods, which had been brought to them by merchants who
believed that their goods would never be violated once they were placed in
charge of the
hanci,
“who will die at his post rather than suffer even a
suspicious eye to rest upon them.”

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.