Fleet K. The Cambridge History of Turkey: Volume 1, Byzantium to Turkey, 1071-1453

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visiting Ottoman dignitaries by the Genoese of Pera, the Genoese settlement

in Constantinople, in the 1390s.

171

With the Turkish conquest of the Aegean coastline and the establishment

of beyliks such as Mentes¸e and Aydın, the ports in these regions, too, became

important Turkish markets. Balat, the main port for Mentes¸e, and Theologos

(modern Selc¸uk), the port of Aydın,servedas major import-export ports for the

Turkish–European trade, exporting grain and slaves and importing soap, wine

and western cloth such as woollensfrom Florence,cloth ofChalons,Narbonne,

Toulouse, Perpignan, and cloths of emerald green, pistache green, azure,

turquoiseand scarlet.

172

Like Antalya, Theologosalso had its ownrequirements

for lengths in which cloth was sold;

173

and it, too, was a silver market.

174

Other

beyliks without a coastal outlet proﬁted from the Mediterranean trade and

merchant ships sailed up and down the B

uk Menderes (Meander) from

Germiyan to the sea.

175

Ottoman advance into Europe further extended the Turkish market with

the conquest of important townssuch as Plovdiv (Filibe) and Edirne, the second

capital of the empire and a well-populated and important market frequented

by many foreign merchants in the 1430s.

176

Goods sold and exported from this

region included wool, which was exported from Tekirda

g (Rodosto), Edirne

and Gelibolu,

177

and slaves. Gelibolu, taken in 1354, became a major Ottoman

slave market, exporting slaves to the Mamluk sultanate and westward across

the Mediterranean. Slaves were also sold in other Turkish markets in Rumeli

(the European section of the Ottoman Empire) such as

Usk

up. It was not just

in Rumeli that this was a lively trade. Beyliks along the Aegean coast, Karası,

Saruhan, Mentes¸e and Aydın, had major slave markets. Slaves sold in great

numbers on the markets of Saruhan and Karası.

178

It was in the market of

Theologos that Ibn Battuta bought a young Christian girl for 40 dinarsinthe

early 1330s.

179

Other major slave markets were found in Bursa and in the ports

of the south, in Antalya and Alanya from where they were exported across the

Mediterranean.

171 1390.iii.31: ASG, San Giorgio 34 n. 590/1304,f.25v; 1391.xii.19: ASG, Antico Commune

22,ff.70, 192; 1392.1.16: ibid.,ff.74, 193; 1392.ii.24: ibid.,ff.76, 193; 1392.v.23: ibid.,ff.78,

196; 1392.x.15: ibid.,ff.88, 175.

172 Pegolotti, Pratica,p.55; Piloti, L’

Egypte,p.72. 173 Pegolotti, Pratica,p.55.

174 Pegolotti, Pratica,p.56. 175 Al-‘Umari, ‘Voyages’, p. 354.

176 Bertrandon de la Broqui

ere, Voyage ,pp.171, 200.

177 Badoer

, Libro,pp.80, 82, 126, 202, 238, 348, 396, 491, 586, 615.

178 Demetrius Kydones, Oratio pro Subsidia Latinorum,inPatrologia Graeca, vol. 154, ed. J. P.

Migne (Paris, 1880), cols. 981/982; St. I. Kourouses,

 



 

  

(1271/2–1355/60) (Athens, 1972), p. 236.

179 Ibn Battuta, Travels,p.309.

250

The Turkish economy, 1071–1453

Together with grain, alum and worked cloth, slaves, either from the region

or traded through it, were the major export items from Turkish territories,

supplying the Mamluk sultanate in Egypt and providing labour for the Aegean

islands,including Cyprus, Crete and Hospitaller-controlled Rhodes.They were

sold on the markets in Constantinople, on the Aegean islands, and in the west,

in Genoa and Venice. This was a trade in which the Turks took part not merely

as traders, both buying and selling, but also as a commodity, for Turkish slaves,

too, were sold in the markets of the eastern Mediterranean, in Constantinople,

Crete and Chios, and further west in Venice and Genoa.

180

Turks ‘and similar

sea monsters’ appeared in Pisa, and were shipped across the Mediterranean

to Spain.

181

The Turkish market was assured a constant supply of slaves in consequence

of the captives taken both in raiding and in larger-scale battles. Umur of Aydın

was particularly renowned for his activities at sea, swooping down on the Latin

settlements and sailing off with numerous captives.

182

The islands were vulner-

able to Turkish attack and Crete lost population to raids from Mentes¸e.

183

The

islands of Andros, Paros and Melos were hit by Ottoman forces under C¸ alı Bey

in the early fourteenth century and many of the inhabitants were seized.

184

Constant ﬁghting kept the markets of Karası supplied and specialist slave mer-

chants frequented these markets, living on this type of trade.

185

Warfare and

large-scale battles resulted in a glut on the slave market and a consequent fall in

prices. As a result of warfare between the Seljuks and Leon of Lesser Armenia,

and the Seljuk capture of the castle of Hancın, prices fell on the market at

Kayseri, resulting in an extremely beautiful Armenian slave and her female

child selling for 50 dirhems, a bull and cow for two, and ﬁve sheep for only one

dirhem.

186

The military successes of the Byzantine general Philanthropenos

at the end of the thirteenth century resulted in the price of a Turkish slave

falling to less than that of a sheep.

187

The battle of Nikopolis in 1396, when the

crusader forces were crushed by the Ottoman ruler Bayezid, produced such a

180 Fleet, Trade,pp.42–3.

181 Iris Origo, ‘The Domestic Enemy: Eastern Slaves in Tuscany in the Fourteenth and

Fifteenth Centuries’, Speculum 30 (1955), 322; Fleet, Trade,p.43.

182 Enveri, D

usturname-i Enveri, ed. M. Halil (Istanbul, 1928); Enveri, Le Destan d’Um

ur Pacha

ust

urn

ame-i Enver

ı): text, translation et notes, ed. and tr. I. M

elikoff-Sayar (Paris, 1954);

Ibn Battuta, Travels,p.311;Oruc¸, Tarihi,p.38.

183 Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, 1331m,p.187, 1358/1359m,pp.217–18.

184 Doukas, Decline,p.118. 185 Al-‘Umari, ‘Voyages’, p. 367.

186 Ibn Bibi, Selc¸ukn

ame,p.57.

187 Planoudes, Maximi monachi Planudis epistolae, ed. M. Treu (Bresiau, 1890), letter 78,

p. 99.

251

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glut that no one in Anatolia or Rumeli was left without a slave.

188

The Mamluk

sultan Barquq also did well out of this battle for a Turk sent him a present of

200 Christian captives from the battle.

189

Ottoman advance into the Balkans

in the 1430s caused prices to fall to such an extent that beautiful young females

sold in lots of three for only 100 akc¸es and a four-year-old boy for 20 akc¸esin

Usk

up. As¸ıkpas¸azade himself sold ﬁve slaves, whom he had captured, on the

market at

Usk

up for 900 akc¸e and other captives in Edirne for 100 akc¸es for two,

and 100 akc¸es for three slaves.

190

Apart from the Mediterranean ports, the Black Sea ports, too, were impor-

tant markets, both in the coastal trade between the Byzantine cities of Tre-

bizond (Trabzon) and Constantinople, and in the trade across the Black Sea

from Crimea and Russia. Samsun and Sinop were markets for fur, cloth and

copper,

191

Giresun for alum

192

and merchants travelling to and from the lands

of the north frequented Kastamonu and ports such as Sinop.

193

These ports

were also frequented by western merchants, particularly the Genoese and

Venetians who had trading settlements in Crimea, Caffa in the case of the

Genoese and Tana for the Venetians. The importance of the Black Sea region

for the European merchants is indicated by the presence of Genoese consuls

in Sinop and Amasra in the early ﬁfteenth century.

All these markets were an important source of revenue for the Turkish

rulers in the form of market taxes and import and export dues. According to

Simon de Saint-Quentin, Sivas, for example, brought in a lucrative income for

the Seljuk sultan.

194

The Seljuks certainly took a healthy interest in taxation

from early on. William of Tyre described how Kılıc¸ Arslan I claimed all the

region from Tarsus to the Hellespont. Thus ‘in the sight of Constantinople

itself he had his own procurators who exacted duties from those passing

by and collected for the use of their master tributes and taxes from all the

surrounding country’.

195

In the ﬁfteenth-century chronicle of As¸ıkpas¸azade

Osman is credited with having established a market tax in Karaca Hisar of

two akc¸e for every y

uk brought and sold in the market. Nothing was paid for

goods left unsold.

196

Certain commodities attracted speciﬁc charges, such as

that levied on wheat in Antalya in the fourteenth century of three aspers per

188 As¸ıkpas¸azade, Chronik,p.61. 189 Piloti, L’

Egypte,pp.109–10.

190 As¸ıkpas¸azade, Chronik,pp.113, 114, 115, 117.

191 Badoer, Libro,pp.14, 27, 88, 206, 306, 307;Balard,Romanie g

enoise, ii,p.784.

192 L

eone Liagre, ‘Le commerce de l’alun en Flandre au moyen

age’, Le Moyen

Age 61 (1955),

187.

193 Al-‘Umari, ‘Voyages’, p. 361. 194 Simon de Saint-Quentin, Historia,p.69.

195 William of Tyre, History, i,p.154. 196 As¸ıkpas¸azade, Chronik,p.21.

252

The Turkish economy, 1071–1453

moggio,

197

two aspers per modio on grain exported from Mentes¸e, one asper per

modio on barley and dried vegetables, three aspers per head for horses, oxen

and donkeys at two and slaves at ten, and wine which attracted a special levy

of 50 aspers per vegetam de Napoli.

198

Levies were charged in Aydın in the ﬁrst

half of the fourteenth century on imported wine of one ﬂorin per butam di

Napoli and on imported soap at one ﬂorin per casa.

199

Other taxes included

brokerage and weighing charges such as that levied in Antalya at the rate of

one asper per moggio for wheat.

200

Goods were charged for warehousing. That

for wheat in Theologos was ﬁxed at 1/5th of a gold ﬂorin per month per 100

moggia.

201

Warehouse charges could also include transportation from land out

to the ship, as was the case in Antalya where the rate of one asper per moggio

of wheat included transportation.

202

In Theologos the rate for hiring animals

to transport wheat from the city to the sea, a distance of nine miglia by land,

was 2.5 gold ﬂorins per 100 moggia.

203

A major source of revenue in port cities was customs charges on imports

and exports. In Antalya, the Cypriots were charged a rate of 2 per cent.

204

the beylik of Mentes¸e the Venetians paid an import tax of 2 per cent, and 2 per

cent also on exports.

205

In Aydın in the early years of the fourteenth century

there was no import tax but a levy on exports of 4 per cent, except on wax

which paid at a rate of 2 per cent.

206

By 1337, Venetians in Aydın were being

charged an export tax of 6 per cent on all goods which were measured by

the shinik (presumably meaning grain and pulses) and 4 per cent on all other

commodities, such as alum, slaves, horses and wax, though there was still no

import tax.

207

By the middle of the century Aydın was imposing an import

tax of 2 per cent on the Venetians, and exports were charged at 2 per cent

(including alum and wax), or 4 per cent in the case of grain, pulses, slaves

and animals.

208

These were presumably preferential rates. The Genoese, too,

along with the Venetians, Arabs and Greeks, paid preferential customs rates

on pulses, barley, millet and other grains under the terms of the 1387 treaty

197 Pegolotti, Pratica,p.58.

198 Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, 1331m,p.187, 1337m,p.198, 1375m,p.222, 1403m, doc.

1403m dvl,p.230, 1407m,p.236.

199 Pegolotti, Pratica,p.56. 200 Pegolotti, Pratica,p.58.

201 Pegolotti, Pratica,p.56. 202 Pegolotti, Pratica,p.58.

203 Pegolotti, Pratica,p.56. 204 Pegolotti, Pratica,p.58.

205 Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, 1331m,p.187, 1337m,p.198, 1375m,p.222, 1403m, doc.

1403m dvl,pp.230–1, 1407m,p.236.

206 Pegolotti, Pratica,p.56.

207 Zachariadou, T

rade and Crusade, 1337a,p.191; for a discussion of the meaning of the

term seruch see p. 149.

208 Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, 1353a,p.214.

253

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concluded with Murad I, though the treaty does not specify what the rates

were.

209

In the treaty concluded in 1403 between S

uleyman and the Genoese,

the Venetians, the Byzantines and the Hospitallers, the rates to be charged are

not given, the clause specifying only that they were to be paid according to

custom.

210

The rate charged in the 1430s in Gelibolu, Edirne and Samsun was

2 per cent.

211

A Turkish economic approach

The economy which emerged under the Turks in the four centuries after the

battle of Manzikert (Malazgirt) was one grounded on the land with signiﬁcant

urban economic activity and a highly active international commercial sphere.

Beyond describing the various aspects of the economy which developed, it is

interesting to consider whether it is possible to discern any common patterns

in the way the various Turkish leaders handled their economy that would

constitute what might be termed a Turkish economic approach.

It is obvious that economic motivation drove conquest. Apart from the basic

desire for booty, Turkish rulers were interested in taking control of economic

assets such as mines, port cities, major markets and trade routes. Commercial

considerations were behind the Seljuk expedition to Sudak in Crimea

212

and

the conquest of Antalya, a major Mediterranean port, by the Seljuk ruler

Keyhusrev in 1207. In Ibn Bibi’saccount the conquest was the resultof merchant

complaints. Merchants had protested to the sultan that returning from Egypt

they had gone to Antalya where they had been maltreated by the Franks and

their goods seized.

213

Economic motivation played a part in the conquest of

Constantinople, a city which, although a mere shadow of its former self,

214

was

soon to become once more an international centre of enormous commercial

wealth, and was behind Mehmed II’s building of Rumeli Hisarı, the castle on

the European coast of the Straits opposite Anadolu Hisarı. The location of

Rumeli Hisarı allowed Mehmed to control shipping through the Straits and

thus to extract customs dues. Any ship attempting not to pay taxes was to

be sunk by the efﬁcient and awe-inspiring cannons of Firuz A

ga, the castle’s

commander.

215

Ottoman–

Isfendiyaro

gulları rivalry rested at least in part on

209 1387.vi.8: ASG, Archivio Segreto 2729. doc. 26, published in Fleet, ‘Treaty’, 15.

210 G. T. Dennis, ‘The Byzantine–Turkish Treaty of 1403’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 33

(1967), 79.

211 Badoer, Libro,pp.87, 89, 114, 181, 253, 306, 352, 353, 384, 462, 491, 496, 640.

212 Ibn Bibi, Selc¸ukn

ame,pp.95–105. 213 Ibn Bibi, Selc¸ukn

ame,pp.36–7, 38.

214 As noted by As¸ıkpas¸azade, Chronik,p.133.

215 Doukas, Decline,p.199; Tursun Bey, History,ff.35a, 35b; Kritoboulos, History,p.21;Oruc¸,

Tarihi,p.107.

254

The Turkish economy, 1071–1453

the rich copper mines of the Black Sea region, round Sinop and Kastamonu,

which the Ottomans wished to take over.

216

It was also rivalry over metal

resources, this time silver and gold mines, which played a part in the struggle

between Murad I and Serbia and Bosnia.

217

While it is clear that economic

motivations drove Turkish conquest, this does not on its own contribute much

to a search for a Turkish economic approach, for it is a factor common in

essence to all patterns of conquest.

A factor of much greater signiﬁcance in economic approach, and one which

undoubtedly in part accounted for the success of the Turkish conquests, was

the Turks’ avoidance of economic disruption. Rather than overturning the

economy of the regions which they conquered, the Turks tended to leave

much of the economic system untouched, thereby guaranteeing minimum

opposition from the conquered population and securing continued revenue for

the new rulers. The Ottomans, for example, were keen to keep pre-Ottoman

taxes in place, converting many from labour services into cash payments and

referring to them as customary dues (r

usum-i urﬁyye or tekalif-i urﬁyye).

218

They made no major changes to the system in operation in the mines in the

Balkans when they took over the region.

219

Balkan taxes were adopted by

the Ottomans and became the ispence, the tax of 25 akc¸e levied on the Chris-

tian population in the Balkans, the word originating perhaps in the Slavic

zupan,

zupanica or

zupnica, a poll-tax.

220

The timar system whereby land was

granted in return for military service was possibly related to the Byzantine

landholding unit, the pronoia,

221

though it may also have been derived from

the Seljuk ikta.

222

The division of land, the c¸ift, conformed to the Byzan-

tine zeugarion/jugum, both representing the amount of land which could be

ploughed by a pair of oxen.

223

Vocabulary, too, came from the Byzantines, such

as the word for customs itself, g

umr

uk, from the Greek word komerkion (Latin

216 Nes¸ri, Kitab-ı Cih

an-n

a, i,pp.320, 322, ii,pp.540–2, 574–6;As¸ıkpas¸azade, Chronik,

pp. 65, 79–80, 92–3; Chalkokondyles, Historiarum Libri Decem,p.185.

217 Nes¸ri, Kitab-ı Cih

an-n

ay, ii,p.212.

218

Inalcık and Quataert, Economic and Social History, i,p.70.

219 Nicoar

a Beldiceanu, Les actes des premiers sultans conserv

es dans les manuscrits turcs de la

Biblioth

eque Nationale

a Paris, vol. II: R

eglements miniers 1390–1512 (Paris and La Haye,

1964).

220 P. Wittek, ‘Devshirme and Shar

ı‘a’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

17, 2 (1955), 272–3;D

sanka Bojani

c-Luka

c, ‘De la nature et de l’origine de l’ispendje’,

Wiener Zeitschrift f

ur die Kunde des Morgenlandes 68 (1976), 24–5;

Inalcık, ‘

Ispence’, in

Islam

Ansiklopedisi (T

urk Diyanet Vakﬁ); Osman Turan, ‘Selc¸uklularda Toprak Hukuku. Miri

TopraklarveHususiM

ulkiyet S¸ekilleri’, Belleten 12, 47 (1948), 549–74.

221 Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey,pp.182–3. 222 See chapter 6 in this volume.

223 Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey,p.173;

Inalcık and Quataert, Economic and Social History, i,

pp. 143–53.

255

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comerchium). The Ottomans also took much from the Ilkhans, whose coins the

early Ottomans imitated and many of whose ﬁnancial accounting methods

they adopted.

224

In the same way as a ﬂuid religious approach and an avoidance

of strict orthodoxy smoothed the path of Ottoman conquest and eased the

acceptance of new rulers among the Byzantine Orthodox peasantry, so too did

the adoption, rather than destruction, of economic systems such as taxation

or systems of landholding. The more minimal the element of abrupt change,

the less the potential for revolt became. Revenues were not disrupted and the

state avoided any need to construct, impose and run new methods of income

collection.

As nature abhors a vacuum, so the Turkish economic system in this early

period showed an abhorrence of complex structures. This was a further factor

in ensuring the success of the new Turkish states and served them well in

avoiding instability. A prime example of this is tax farming. Under this system

a state auctioned off the collection of a source of revenue, such as customs

dues, to an individual or individuals for a lump sum. This ensured the state

a ﬁxed income without the need to maintain any form of collection system

or to run any risk involved owing to such factors as market ﬂuctuations or,

in the case of crops, harvest failure. All such risk in this system fell on the

tax farmer who, however, beneﬁted from any successful speculation and reaped

the proﬁts from a rising market or boom harvest. This system is often regarded

as a backward one for it delivered considerable power into the hands of the

tax farmers and abnegated the state’s responsibility in an important sector of

its economy. It certainly had considerable drawbacks in the later period when

tax farmers became in essence uncontrollable semi-independent magnates

whose activities in the eighteenth century were severely damaging to the local

populations and the state alike. The negative impact of tax farming in the later

period does not mean automatically, however, that its use in the early Turkish

states of the fourteenth and ﬁfteenth centuries was a bad thing. In fact, so

long as the state was strong and able to control its tax farmers, preventing

abusive over-taxation, the economic security it brought to these young states

was considerable, ensuring a secure income without the necessity of complex

structures for revenue collection, and even, it could be argued, providing a

stimulus to commercial activity, for under this system the tax farmers had

every incentive to increase production and, in the case of import and export

dues, to encourage trade.

224 Said

Ozt

urk, Osmanlı Ars¸iv Belgelerinde Siyakat Yazısı ve Tarihi Gelis¸imi (Istanbul, 1996),

pp. 28–9; Remler, ‘Ottoman, Isfendiyarid, and Eretnid Coinage’, pp. 168, 185–8.

256

The Turkish economy, 1071–1453

Tax farming seems to have been in use among Turkish rulers from early

on.

225

In the middle of the thirteenth century control of all alum resources

was granted by the Seljuk sultan to two merchants. This resulted, according to

William of Rubruck who travelled through Anatolia in this period, in a price

22 per cent higher than it should have been.

226

Whether this was a monopoly

or tax farming is unclear from the evidence available, but it seems plausible at

least to suggest that tax farming was involved, particularly in view of the high

price level. In the following century tax farming was apparently in use in the

beyliks of Mentes¸e and Aydın and was applied to such goods as alum, wax and

hides, textiles, soap and wine, which were placed ‘in appalto’ or ‘in gabella’,

terms which seem to mean a tax farm.

227

Tax farming no doubt existed, too,

in the early days of the Ottoman state for there is no reason to presume that

Ottoman practice in this respect differed from that in the other beyliks of the

period. In any case, it certainly seems to have been in operation in the reign

of Murad I when Kara R

ustem Pas¸a was collecting the 25-akc¸e slave tax in

Gelibolu,

228

and under Murad II when a tax farmer (amaldar) was operating

in the same location around 1421.

229

One interesting aspect of tax farming under the early Turkish rulers was

the use they made of Latins. Of the two merchants in control of alum in the

mid-thirteenth century, one, Nicolao de Santo-Siro, was Genoese, the other,

Benefatio de Molendino, Venetian. It seems that foreigners were used by the

Ottomans to collect customs revenue and that during the reigns of Murad I and

Bayezid I Latin, probably, Genoese, tax farmers were operating in Ottoman

ports in this capacity, as indicated by a Venetian document from 1390.

230

The

tax farm of alum was held under Mehmed I by the Genoese Giovanni Adorno,

who held the same concession for some time under Mehmed’s successor,

Murad II.

231

Another Genoese, Francesco Draperio, a merchant of consider-

able consequence close to the Ottoman ruler, tax farmed the alum mines

under both Murad II and Mehmed II.

232

The Turkish use of Genoese and

225 Kate Fleet, ‘Tax-farming in the Early Ottoman State’, The Medieval History Journal 6, 2

(2003), 249–58.

226 Rubruck, Mission,p.273.

227 Elizabeth Zachariadou (Trade and Crusade,pp.134–5) has taken these terms to mean a

monopoly but it seems more likely that they in fact mean a tax farm. See Kate Fleet,

‘Appalto and Gabella: Farmed Tax or Monopoly?’, Eurasian Studies 2, 1 (2003), 31–42.

228 As¸ıkpas¸azade, Chronik,p.50;Oruc¸, Tarihi,pp.41–2. 229 As¸ıkpas¸azade, Chronik,p.88.

230 J. Chrysostomides, Monumenta Peloponnesica (Camberley, 1995), no. 68,p.138. See also

Fleet, Trade,pp.134–5.

231 Doukas, Decline,pp.150–1, 158;As¸ıkpas¸azade, Chronik,bab.87,p.88.

232 1449.i

v.1: ASG, Notai Antichi, f. li; Philip R. Argenti, The Occupation of Chios by the

Genoese and their Administration of the Island, 1346–1566, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1958), iii,

no. 222,pp.658–9.

257

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Venetian tax farmers is a further example of the ﬂuidity and pragmatism of

early Turkish economic policy. Keen to beneﬁt from a highly lucrative market,

Latin merchants were willing to invest money, and expertise, in the Turkish

economy and the Turks were willing to beneﬁt from it in what proved to

be, particularly in the case of the Ottomans and the Genoese, a symbiotic

relationship of mutual beneﬁt.

The Turkish rulers, while adopting much that they found and beneﬁting

from the Latins operating in their territories, were also both active promoters

of economic activity and traders in their own right. They did much to promote

economic prosperity, essential to the survival and success of their states. They

took measures to ensure that land was not left uncultivated, making certain

that peasants stayed on the land, either through persuasionor population trans-

fers, an approach they also adopted towards the towns. They secured a vibrant

economically active population for their cities. The Seljuk ruler settled rich

merchants in the recently conquered ports of Antalya and Sinop to ensure the

development of trade.

233

Kılıc¸ Arslan II, when establishing the town of Aksaray,

settled merchants there to maintain its prosperity.

234

Mehmed II enforced the

movement of artisans into the newly conquered city of Constantinople.

Keen to facilitate trade in their territories the Seljuks in particular built

caravansaries to provide shelter and security for merchants and their goods.

Such caravansaries were set up on the major east–west and north–south inter-

national trade routes, bringing goods from Egypt and Syria to Antalya and

Alanya and crossing through Konya, Sivas and Erzurum and on to Iran, or to

Sinop and Samsun and from there across the Black Sea to Crimea, or running

across Anatolia through Konya and Aks¸ehir westwards to Constantinople and

Anatolia.

235

The ﬁrst caravansary was built in the reign of Kılıc¸ Arslan II near

Aksaray.

236

Others were built in the fourteenth century.

237

Such caravansaries

were important for the security of both merchants and merchandise, and for

providing everything a traveller might need: a place to sleep, food, depots

for goods, stables, fodder for their animals, hamams, mescids, hospitals, even

blacksmiths and cobblers. They were staffed by ofﬁcials who dealt with the

233 Osman Turan, ‘Selc¸uk Kervansarayları’, Belleten 10, 39 (1946), 473.

234 Turan, ‘Selc¸uk Kervansarayları’, 476.

235 Bertrandon de la Broqui

ere, Voyage, stayed in a very beautiful caravansary near

Karahisar (p. 123), and in one in K

utahya (p. 128); Pegolotti visited two (identiﬁed

by Osman Turan as those of Karatay and Keykuban, ‘Selc¸uk Kervansarayları’, p. 53),

Pratica,p.39; Ibn Bibi mentions several, Selc¸ukn

ame,pp.73 (Pervane Kervansarayı

near Aksaray), p. 82 (Lale Kervansarayı), p. 132 (Ahmed-i raht Kervansarayı), p. 199

(Kervansaray-ı Sultan), p. 223 (Kervansaray-ı Altunba), p. 234 (Kervansaray-ı Karatay);

Eﬂaki, Ariﬂerin Menkibeleri,p.274.

236 Turan, ‘Selc¸uk Kervansarayları’, p. 476. 237 See chapter 8 in this volume.

258

The Turkish economy, 1071–1453

administration and with the income and expenditure.

238

Apart from ensuring

the economic activity of major routes and towns, caravansaries also made the

region round them a centre of trade.

239

Zaviyes and hanekahs (dervish lodges),

which were so abundant when Ibn Battuta travelled through Anatolia, served

in many ways as caravansarys did for travellers, though on a smaller scale.

240

the towns the Turkish rulers built bedestans and hans (caravansaries), commer-

cial buildings in which merchants lived, traded and stored their goods, such

as the Bey Han of Orhan, or Geyve Han and

Ipek Han built by Mehmed I,

241

and the bedestan with shops round it built by Mehmed I in Edirne.

242

The Turks were themselves active merchants, trading not just within their

own territories but also within the Byzantine Empire, in Constantinople, in

Syria and in the Black Sea and Crimea, as they did under the Seljuks,

243

and

on the islands in the Aegean. At the end of the twelfth century merchants

from Konya were trading in Constantinople.

244

In the early ﬁfteenth century

Turks traded in Chios. In 1414 a Turk, Sipahi Bayezid, was trading grain with

Domenico Balbi on Chios,

245

a trade in which C

uneyd Bey, the then ruler of

Aydın, was also involved as he too sold grain to Chios.

246

Turks were also

apparently trading copper there in this period.

247

Bayezid I’s demand for the

right to sell slaves in Rhodes without any restrictions indicates that Turks

were trading slaves there in the late fourteenth century.

248

It was Bayezid who

insisted on the establishment of a kadı in Constantinople to protect the interests

of Turkish merchants trading there.

249

That Turkish merchants were active

in Pera in this period is supported by the statement issued by the Genoese

authorities in 1402 urging any Turks with complaints against former Genoese

238 See, for example, the vakıf for the Karatay Kervansarayı, Osman Turan, ‘Selc¸uk Devri

Vakﬁyeleri III: Celaleddin Karatay Vakıﬂarı ve Vakﬁyeleri’, Belleten 12, 45 (1948), 17–70.

239 Turan, ‘Selc¸uk Devri Vakﬁyeleri III’, pp. 63–4.

240 Turan, ‘Selc¸uk Kervansarayları’, pp. 479, 492.

241 See chapter 8 in this volume; Eﬂaki, Ariﬂerin Menkibeleri,pp.125, 131, refers to

S¸ekerfurus¸an (S¸ekerciler) Hanı.

242 Oruc¸, Tarihi,p.71.Agreatﬁrein849 (1445–6) reduced the bedestan in Edirne to ashes;

Oruc¸, Tarihi,p.97.

243 Choniates, Annals,pp.272, 291; Ibn Bibi, Selc¸ukn

ame,p.98;Eﬂaki,Ariﬂerin Menkibeleri,

pp. 158, 243.

244 Choniates, Annals,p.272.

245 1414.vii.16: ASG, Notaio Giovanni Balbi, Sc. 46, ﬁlze 1, doc. 311,

published in Fleet, Trade,

Appendix 5, doc. 12,pp.173–4.

246 1414.iii.18: ASG, Notaio Giovanni Balbi, Sc. 46, ﬁlze 1, doc. 288, published in Fleet, Trade,

Appendix 5, doc. 10,pp.171–2.

247 1404.xii.31: ASG, Notaio Gregorio Panissario, Sc. 37, ﬁlze I, doc. 48; Toniolo, Notai

Genovesi, doc. 52,p.105.

248 Luttrell, ‘Hospitallers’, pp. 96–7.

249 Doukas, Decline,p.81.Akadı was installed by Emperor John VII, then acting as regent;

ibid., p. 87.

259