Faroqhi S.N. The Cambridge History of Turkey: Volume 3, The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839

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of Salonika, who wove the woollen cloth out of which janissary uniforms

were sewn. In the seventeenth century, as in earlier periods, the state ensured

the weavers’ access to raw wool by forbidding merchants to enter the market

before the weavers’ needs had been taken care of. Moreover, in small towns

on the southern coast of Anatolia it was customary, throughout the period

in question and often down to the present, for townsmen to migrate to the

mountains during the summer. Certain craftsmen set up shop in the new loca-

tion, supplying not only their fellow migrants but also peasants and nomads

frequenting the fairs (panayır) which can be documented in this area from the

second half of the sixteenth century.

Presumably these artisans also bought

their supplies of wool, hides and skins from the primary producers.

Apart from this special situation, there are occasional references in certain

kadi registers to urban craftsmen doing work for villagers. Thus by the begin-

ning of the nineteenth century, and possibly even earlier, peasants from the

countryside around Nablus came to town to purchase the textiles needed for

new clothes, which were de rigeur at weddings.

In the late sixteenth century,

estates of peasant women living near Konya and owning some jewellery have

been encountered, also indicating market links.

But such direct commercial exchanges between craftsmen and rural

dwellers were probably the exception rather than the rule. Peasants must

have 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 villagers. In most cases, peasants presumably

earned cash mainly to pay their taxes, and not to purchase ready-made goods.

Town artisans, on the other hand, served the needs of the governing class and

their retainers, and also of merchants and other artisans. But as we have seen,

there were quite a few exceptions to this rule.

Organising the supply of raw materials

From the craftsmen’spoint of view, purchasesnormallywerearranged through

the guild authorities, and constituted the main responsibility of the guild

7 Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Sixteenth Century Periodic Markets in Various Anatolian sancaks:

Ic¸el,

Hamid, Karahisar-i Sahib, K

utahya, Aydın and Mentes¸e’, Journal of the Social and Economic

History of the Orient 22, 1 (1979), 32–79.

8 Beshara Doumani, RediscoveringPalestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700–1900

(Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1995).

9 Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘The Peasants of Saideli in the Later Sixteenth Century’, Archivum

Ottomanicum 8 (1983), 216–50.

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Guildsmen and handicraft producers

wardens (keth

uda).

Masters were assigned their shares of whatever raw mate-

rials were available; in principle, though perhaps not always in practice, these

shares were equal. Purchasing by the guild therefore functioned as a device

for equalising the chances of masters, and therefore presumably was favoured

by the poorer artisans. But in practice, monitoring the masters may have

been a complicated business. In seventeenth-century Bursa, individual crafts-

men were frequently accused of offering higher raw material prices than their

respective guilds, thereby corneringmore than their fairshare of scarce inputs.

Common purchasing by means of guild ofﬁcers enhanced the guildsmen’s

bargaining power vis-

a-vis peasant producers and, whenever semi-ﬁnished

goods were needed, other craftsmen as well. But most importantly, collective

purchases constituted the base for apportioning minerals serving as inputs,

such as silver, salt, copper or alum. Mines were normally farmed out to the

highest bidder, and to ensure that the mineral produced was actually sold,

the empire was divided into zones (

u) whose inhabitants were supposed

to buy only from the source to which they had been assigned. On the other

hand, artisans who normally used alum or some other mineral as inputs

might be required to purchase a certain quantity at prices ﬁxed by the tax-

farmer, regardless of their actual needs.

Such arrangements could onlyworkif

distribution was centralised in some way, and even then there were difﬁculties.

For in cases in which a given mineral could be procured more cheaply from

outside the

u in question, smuggling was rife. Unfortunately we do not

know whether guilds were willing to act as illegal purchasers, or whether such

matters were left to the initiative of the individual artisan.

The division of labour

The most visible and therefore best-documented manufacturers were

doubtlessly those organised in guilds. In small towns, craft structures might be

relativelysimple, with, forexample,only one type– or at most a very few types –

of tailors who made up fabrics into ready-to-wear garments. But in larger cities,

producers werehighly specialised. Thus distinct though similar goods might be

10 Haim Gerber, Economy and Society in an Ottoman City: Bursa, 1600–1700 (Jerusalem, 1988).

11 Ibid., pp. 48–51.

12 L

utﬁ G

uc¸er, ‘XV–XVII. Asırlarda Osmanlı

Imparatorlu

gunda tuz inhisarı ve tuzlaların

is¸letme nizamı’,

Istanbul

Universitesi

Iktisat Fak

ultesi Mecmuası 23, 1–4 (1962–3), 97–143;

Heidemarie Do

ganalp-Votzi, Der Gerber, der Kulturbringer: Politik,

Okonomie, Zivilisation

im osmanischen Vorderasien (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), p. 114.

13 Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Alum Production and Alum Trade in the Ottoman Empire (about 1560–

1830)’, Wiener Zeitschrift f

ur die Kunde des Morgenlandes 71 (1979), 153–75.

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suraiya n. faroqhi

produced by separate guilds. There might be four or ﬁve different varieties of

shoemakers, who each procured leather from the tanners of their own town.

Or else they were supplied through the shoe merchants; the latter put out

work to artisans and specialised in the marketing of different kinds of shoes.

If a new type of shoe became popular among customers, these shoemakers

might turn to the authorities for a decision as to which guild was permitted

to manufacture the new item.

We imagine the ‘typical’ artisan as working in a small shop, which might

constitute his freehold property, or else be rented from a pious foundation.

But craftsmen of a single guild, or a few closely related guilds, might also

work together in a common workshop, where they pooled their investments

to procure the implements needed. The premises of such large workshops

would normally belong to a pious foundation. This type of organisation rec-

ommended itself especially when implements were costly, as in the case of

the copper vats used by dyers. It seems that this arrangement gained in fre-

quency during the late seventeenth and particularly the eighteenth century –

unfortunately at present, this impression cannot be veriﬁed or disproved

statistically.

Possibly because of the high rate of inﬂation prevailing through-

out the eighteenth century, foundations discovered that their revenues were

being eroded, and built rent-producing real estate to make up the difference.

As many foundation administrators had access to the central authorities, they

could procure sultanic commands ordering artisans to work in these commer-

cial buildings, regardless of the preferences of the latter.

But apparently in some cases, collective workshops were considered desir-

able by the more substantial craftsmen themselves. Thus the famous saddlers’

compound of Istanbul, the Sarac¸hane – an ‘old’ collective workshop as it went

back to the time of Mehmed the Conqueror – burned down in 1693.

While the

more modest craftsmen used this opportunity to scatter all over the city, the

wealthier saddlers made sure that the compound was rebuilt, and it remained

in use until destroyed by a ﬁre in 1908. If this case in fact conformed to a general

pattern, then the more inﬂuential guild members (who often, but not neces-

sarily always, were also wealthier than their colleagues) presumably saw the

14 Do

ganalp-Votzi, Der Gerber,p.173 and elsewhere.

15 Suraiya Faroqhi, Towns and Townsmen of Ottoman Anatolia: Trade, Crafts and Food Production

in an Urban Setting (Cambridge, 1984), p. 164.

16 Mehmet Genc¸, ‘Ottoman Industry in the Eighteenth Century: General Framework,

Characteristics, and Main Trends’, in Manufacturing in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey,

1500–1950, ed. Donald Quataert (Albany, 1994), pp. 59–86,atp.63.

17 C¸a

gatay Uluc¸ay, ‘

Istanbul Sarac¸hanesi ve sarac¸larına dair bir aras¸tırma’, Tarih Dergisi 3,

5–6 (1951–2), 147–64,atp.148.

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Guildsmen and handicraft producers

collective workshop as a convenient means of social control. For even more

than the ‘craftsmen’s street’ allotted to a single trade (c¸ars¸ı), the collective

workshop lent itself to a close monitoring of every member’s comings and

goings. Up to the present, no cases have been found of artisans who used the

collective workshop as a convenient site for dividing up the work process by

stages, and established manufactories in which the product was passed from

shop to shop until completion.

Certain craftsmen might exert ‘inﬂuence’ in

the collective workshop, but nobody could presume to control the productive

activities of his fellows.

However, this sphere of relative autonomy shrank whenever artisans were

associated in a partnership (s¸irket). Such arrangements were common among

merchants, and the studies undertaken so far concentrate upon the mercantile

aspect.

But occasionally we ﬁnd artisans working in a dye-house associated

not only through membership in a guild but also, even more intensively, as a

s¸irket. Here the monitoring of fellow guildsmen was probably even closer than

elsewhere, and those excluded for whatever reason had a hard time obtaining

any kind of work as dyers. However, in such a case the capital invested and a

share of current proﬁts was paid out to the man leaving the shop. At present

we cannot tell how common it was for craftsmen to organise themselves in

partnerships.

There also existed another, more ‘modern’, kind of labour division. A com-

plex product such as silk, velvet or ﬁne leather shoes might go through the

hands of many different craftsmen before reaching the consumer. When many

artisans worked together to produce, for instance, a sophisticated piece of silk

cloth out of undyed raw silk, outsiders might come to control and coordinate

the process. In seventeenth-century Bursa, silk manufacturing was controlled

by the silk merchants (kazzaz), who owned the imported Iranian silk, an essen-

tial input, and passed it on to twisters, bleachers and dyers. These craftsmen

owned their equipment and operated their own shops, but probably they

did not possess the capital required to procure raw silk. Possibly they also

lacked the contacts needed to market the ﬁnished product. Thus Bursa silk

18 Genc¸, ‘Ottoman Industry’, p. 63.

19 Murat C¸ izakc¸a, A Comparative Evolution of Business Partnerships: The Islamic World and

Europe, with Speciﬁc Reference to the Ottoman Archives (Leiden, 1996); Fethi Gedikli, Osmanlı

s¸irket k

ult

uXVI.veXVII.y

uzyıllarda mud

arebe uygulaması (Istanbul, 1998).

20 Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Ortak is¸liklerle

ozel evler arasında XVIII. y

uzyıl Bursa’sında is¸yerleri’,

in Bir masaldı Bursa ...,ed.EnginYenal(Istanbul, 1996), pp. 97–104; Suraiya Faroqhi,

‘The Centre of Urfa in the Eighteenth Century’, in Tarihten g

uze Anadolu’da konut

ve yerles¸me, ed. Yıldız Sey et al. (Istanbul, n.d.), pp. 278–83.

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suraiya n. faroqhi

production during the seventeenth century has been classed as an example of

an urban putting-out system run by the kazzaz.

Information on rural artisans working within such a context is even less

abundant. ‘Putting out’ arrangements existed in the environs of Ankara, where

peasant women were spinning for merchants by the mid-sixteenth century, and

doubtlessly continued to do so during the seventeenth. During the last years

of the sixteenth century, the villagers of

Istanos (Zir), Miranos and Erkeksu

petitioned the administration for exemption from the barley dues normally

levied upon Ottoman peasants, as they were weavers and not agriculturalists.

From this same period dates a sultanic command referring to the mohair

producers in small towns west of Ankara, who were unable to provide coins

acceptable to the tax-collectors because they were habitually paid in debased

coin; this phenomenon probably occurred in later decades as well.

From the

seventeenth century properly speaking (1678–9), we possess casual references

to merchants controlling the production of cotton cloth in western Anatolia.

Fabrics woven inDenizli, Buldan or Manisa weretransported to Tirefor dyeing,

before the construction of dye-houses in the producing localities themselves

rendered this procedure unnecessary. In an equally casual fashion, we learn of

the existence of a putting-out textile manufacture in the villages surrounding

Bursa.

Apart from the Ankara countryside, in none of the documented cases

does the evidence allow us to assume the existence of a fully-ﬂedged proto-

industry, in which, by the accepted deﬁnition, the lives of the villagers were

conditioned not by the size of the harvest, but by the prosperity or decline of

a dominant local manufacture.

Categories of workers

While working for a merchant in an urban setting was compatible with guild

membership, most rural artisans were probably unorganised. This makes rural

craftsmen virtually invisible to the modern historian; their very existence

must be deduced from documents mainly concerned with other matters.

21 Gerber, Bursa,p.65.

Ozer Ergenc¸, ‘1600–1615 yılları arasında Ankara iktisadi tarihine ait aras¸tırmalar’,

in T

urkiye iktisat tarihi semineri, ed. Osman Okyar and

Unal Nalbanto

glu (Ankara, 1975),

pp. 145–68,atp.154.

23 Faroqhi, Towns and Townsmen,p.143.

24 Inalcik, ‘Capital Formation’, p. 118; Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Merchant Networks and Ottoman

Craft Production (16th–17th Centuries)’, in Making a Living in the Ottoman Lands,

1480–1820, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi (Istanbul, 1995), pp. 169–92.

25 Franklin F. Mendels, ‘Protoindustrialization: The First Phase of the Industrialization

Process’, Journal of Economic History 32 (1972), 241–61.

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Guildsmen and handicraft producers

With a few exceptions, the same thing applies to female workers, who played

an important role, especially in Bursa. When in 1678 a count of the roughly 300

spinning-wheels in this city was undertaken, it turned out that half of them

were operated by women. During those years, a tax rebate was requested for

the not inherently implausible reason that the labour force consisted largely

of poor women.

But in Ankara as well, female participation in mohair man-

ufacture was far from negligible. Dyeing was practised by Bursa women as a

cottage industry, much to the chagrin of the guild-organised dyers. Candle-

making also was a domestic craft, and established candle-makers (mumcu)

sometimes complained about competition from housewives. In 1720, women

married to blacksmiths working for the navy arsenal prepared and sold a dish

called pac¸a, made out of lambs’ trotters, even though the guild of pac¸a-makers

tried hard to get rid of these competitors.

Rural women also must have

worked at crafts, but the surviving documentation deals with urban produc-

ers only.

We know very little about the manner in which such craftswomen marketed

their goods. Some may have sold informally to their neighbours; no records

enlighten us about this practice. Others may have entrusted their products to

itinerant saleswomen who visited the female members of wealthy households

to show them the latest novelties. At least in Bursa there were some who sold

their own products in the women’s market. Even though competing craftsmen

were less than happy about this situation, the tax exemption of this market was

conﬁrmed because ‘poor women’ must be allowed to maintain themselves.

Apart from women working on their own, there must have been those who

aided their husbands; in both Ankara and Bursa, this was facilitated by the fact

that many looms were located not in workshops but in private homes.

How workshop labour was trained and recruited is but imperfectly known.

Apprentices served for a variable number of years, and probably were obliged

to help out not only in the shop, but also in the master’s home.

According

to a sultanic command from the year 1622, Bursa velvet-makers found their

workmen at weekly outdoor gatherings. Recruitment took place under the

supervision of experienced masters (ehl-i hibre), and only those who had been

26 Haim Gerber, ‘Social and Economic Position of Women in an Ottoman City: Bursa

1600–1700’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 12 (1980), 231–44.

27 Bas¸bakanlık Ars¸ivi, Istanbul, S¸ik

ayet Defteri 85,p.399 (1132/1720).

28 Gerber, ‘Social and Economic Position of Women’, p. 238.

29 Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Mohair Manufacture and Mohair Workshops in Seventeenth Century

Ankara’,

Istanbul

Universitesi

Iktisat Fak

ultesi Mecmuası 41, 1–4 (1982–3), 211–36 (Turkish

version: ‘Onyedinci y

uzyıl Ankara’sında sof imalatı ve sof at

olyeleri’, 237–59).

30 Faroqhi, ‘Urban Saint’.

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suraiya n. faroqhi

properly trained were supposed to enter employers’ shops. However, this

rule was often more honoured in the breach than in the observance. When

workmen were scarce, not only did masters hire low-grade labourers, the

latter also demanded advance pay; they might then disappear in the middle of

the week, before their allotted tasks had been completed.

It is notable that

these employees of the velvet-makers were called not journeymen but simply

labourers (is¸c¸i); whether the master velvet-makers employed journeymen in

addition to this ﬂoating labour force remains unclear.

The guilds as intermediaries between craft

masters and the state

Guilds had the double function of serving the interests of the masters and,

from the state’s point of view, securing supervision and the payment of arti-

sans’ taxes. Masters were concerned about controlling access to their crafts;

this desire was usually expressed in the form of complaints about improp-

erly trained workmen trying to set up shop. Unless a given artisan himself

belonged to the wealthy members of his guild, he would also try to elimi-

nate competition from his richer or more enterprising colleagues. Apart from

the disputes over raw material procurement we have already encountered,

richer masters attracting customers by allowing them easy credit also consti-

tuted a bone of contention. Guilds also took a hand in price-ﬁxing. In provin-

cial towns the kadis usually determined by administrative decree only the

prices of a few essential goods. In most other cases, leading guildsmen were

called upon to decide what should be charged. Even where the kadi did ofﬁ-

cially make these decisions, the advice of senior guild members was needed,

if only because unrealistic prices would merely have encouraged the black

market.

On the other hand, given the weakness of urban police forces, the Ottoman

state also used the guilds as a means of controlling the urban population.

This included both the procurement of services needed by the army and navy,

and securing the payment of taxes and dues. In every campaign, a certain

number of craftsmen were drafted to supply the soldiers with boots, coats and

tents; the necessary investments had to be made by the relevant guilds.

This

could become an explosive issue. In 1730, the rebellion of Patrona Halil, which

31 Fahri Dalsar, T

urk sanayi ve ticaret tarihinde Bursa’da ipekc¸ilik (Istanbul 1960), p. 40.

32 Gilles Veinstein, ‘Du march

e urbain au march

e du camp: l’institution ottomane des

orducu’,inM

elanges Professeur Robert Mantran, ed. Abdeljelil Temimi (Zaghouan, 1988),

pp. 299–327.

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Guildsmen and handicraft producers

brought down Ahmed III and his grand vizier, Dam

Ibr

ım Pas¸a, found

adherents in part because artisans who had spent money on equipping their

fellows for a campaign were frustrated at seeing the sultanic army settled in

Usk

udar, and the money which they could ill afford to lose being wasted in

consequence.

Another service demanded from certain types of guilds concerned the dock-

yards and navy. Until galleys were ﬁnally phased out in the course of the sev-

enteenth century, rowers needed to propel them were recruited in advance of

every campaign. Partly in order to improve security, ‘free’ oarsmen were inter-

spersed with the criminals and prisoners of war who normally performed this

service. ‘Free’ oarsmen were supplied at least in part by waterfront workers,

such as the boatmen who linked

Usk

udar, Galata and the Bosporus villages

to intra muros Istanbul.

We have no data on the life expectancy of rowers on

Ottoman navy ships. But since conditions seem to have paralleled those on

other Mediterranean galleys, on which we do possess some information, risks

to life must have been quite high. Moreover, any naval campaign necessitated a

spate of ship-building. Artisans ordinarily working for private customers were

drafted for this purpose, and usually paid wages far below what they would

have received in the regular market.

Guildsmen under state supervision

Where the capital was concerned, the quantity and quality of goods available

was of direct relevance to the political fortunes of rulers and viziers. This

explains why fairly mundane problems involving Istanbul craftsmen were

often discussed in the afternoon meetings of the grand vizier and his advisers,

and occasionally even in the presence of the sultan himself. This phenomenon

is wellknownfrom the sixteenth century, and continued throughout the period

under discussion.

Routine supervision apart, a sultan or grand vizier might

institute a special drive against a particular abuse, such as short weight for

bread or defective lengths for cloth sold by the piece.

33 M

unir Aktepe, Patrona isyanı (1730) (Istanbul, 1958), p. 39.

Idris Bostan, Osmanlı bahriye tes¸kil

atı: XVIII. y

uzyılda ters

ane-i

amire (Ankara, 1992), p. 202.

35 Ahmet Reﬁk Altınay, Onuncu asr-ı hicr

ı’de

Istanbul hayatı (1485–1591) (Istanbul, 1988);

Ahmet Reﬁk Altınay, Onbirinci asr-ı hicr

ı’de

Istanbul hayatı (1592–1688) (Istanbul,

1988); Ahmet Reﬁk Altınay, Onikinci asr-ı hicr

ı’de

Istanbul hayatı (1689–1785) (Istan-

bul, 1988); Ahmet Reﬁk Altınay, On

uc¸

unc

u asr-ı hicr

ı’de

Istanbul hayatı (1786–1882)

(Istanbul, 1988); Salih Aynural,

Istanbul de

girmenleri ve fırınları, zahire ticareti (Istanbul,

2001).

345

suraiya n. faroqhi

In seventeenth-century Istanbul, the role played by the muhtesib, who, in the

Ottoman context, dealt largely with market regulation, was still considerable.

This functionary enforced the ofﬁcially decreed prices (narh), which, in the

capital with its large number of politically privileged consumers, applied to

a larger variety of goods than elsewhere.

In addition, the muhtesib collected

taxes from craftsmen – which, from the seventeenth century onwards, he

often farmed. In the eighteenth century, this ofﬁcial generally seems to have

played a less prominent role, possibly because his concerns were now so often

purely ﬁscal. Mutual supervision on the part of craftsmen therefore increased

in importance, and it is probably not by chance that the numerous documents

recording reciprocal control of artisans through their guilds largely date from

the eighteenth century.

Guilds and (para)military corps

From the second half of the seventeenth century onward, Muslim artisans

frequently joined the military corps stationed in their places of residence

(janissaries, artillerists, explosives specialists, etc.), which by this inﬂux became

paramilitary, militia-like organisations.

This process has been studied in detail

for Cairo, but is documented also for Syria and the Balkan towns. Admittedly

the soldiers’ pay, to which militiamen were also entitled, was reduced to almost

nothing by the heavy inﬂation that characterised the entire eighteenth century.

But from the craftsmen’s pointof view, belonging to acorps still meant freedom

from many taxes demanded from ordinary Ottoman subjects. Moreover, while

money was taken out of their estates on behalf of the corps, artisan militiamen

could expect the remainder to pass on to their legitimate heirs, and not be

conﬁscated on one pretext or another. As to the military service involved,

a certain number of the men enrolled in the corps were actually called up

for campaigns. However, the military value of these inexperienced craftsmen-

soldiers was often low.

Well before artisans joined the corps in signiﬁcant numbers, the comman-

ders of manymilitary units were already in the business of collecting protection

dues (in Cairo, himaye). Thus the notion of craftsmen afﬁliated with a given

36 Robert Mantran, Istanbul dans la seconde moiti

e du XVIIe si

ecle: essai d’histoire institutionnelle,

economique et sociale (Paris and Istanbul, 1962), pp. 299–348.

37 K

uko

glu, Osmanlılarda narh m

uessesesi, passim.

38 M

ubahat K

uko

glu, ‘Osmanlı esnafında oto-kontrol m

uessesesi’, in Ahilik ve esnaf, kon-

feranslar ve seminer, metinler, tartıs¸malar (Istanbul, 1986), pp. 55–86.

39 Andr

e Raymond, Artisans et commerc¸ants au Caire au XVIIIe si

ecle, 2 vols. (Damascus,

1973–4), vol. II, pp. 666–726.

346

Guildsmen and handicraft producers

military corps was well established by the late seventeenth century; however,

craftsmen did not necessarily join the corps to whichtheir guild paid protection

money. Corps commanders derived signiﬁcant authority from the fact that a

large share of the Muslim urban population was, technically speaking, under

their command. On the other hand, members of the military– or paramilitary –

corps might be inclined to enter a craft or trade guild. In Cairo it was often

difﬁcult to distinguish craftsmen who had become part of a militarised organ-

isation from soldiers who had joined a craft guild. Due to the low pay they

received, soldiers were forced to work for a livelihood, especially if they were

married.

In some places, however, adhering to a military corps was not an option

open to the ordinary artisan. Thus in eighteenth-century Mosul, only the

leading ﬁgures of each craft joined the janissaries, and social differentiation

within the relevant guilds increased in consequence.

While monographs on

the relationship between guildsmen and military corps exist for certain towns

and regions, the issue has not yet been studied from a comparative point of

view.

Artisans and sultanic festivals

The participation of artisans in festivals organised by the Ottoman palace was

probably less burdensome than logistical support for the army or navy on

campaign, or actual military service. Yet this phenomenon is worth studying

for the light it sheds on the relationship between certain Ottoman sultans and

those of their artisan subjects who happened to live in cities such as Istanbul,

Cairo or Edirne. When a prince was circumcised and/or a princess married

off, it was customary to celebrate the event by a parade of artisans, who were

expected to make the sultan fairly sumptuous presents. Similar parades were

held, at least in certain cases, when the army was about to leave the Ottoman

capital for a campaign.

Special lists of participating craftsmen recorded the

event for posterity, samples of which were available to Evliya C¸ elebi when in

the middle of the seventeenth century, he tried to enumerate the guildsmen

of Istanbul and Cairo.

While the ofﬁcial documents used by Evliya seem to

40 Dina Rizk Khoury, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul 1540–1834

(Cambridge, 1997), p. 20.

41 Mantran, Istanbul,p.352–3.

42 Evliy

aC¸ elebi, Evliy

aC¸ elebi Seyahatn

amesi: Topkapı Sarayı Ba

gdat 307 yazmasının transkrip-

siyonu – dizini, 9 vols., vol. I, ed. Orhan S¸aik G

okyay (Istanbul 1996), pp. 220–316; Mantran,

Istanbul,pp.349–424; Evliy

aC¸ elebi, Seyahatn

amesi vol. 10, Mısır, Sudan, Habes¸(1672–1680)

(Istanbul, 1938), pp. 358–86.

347