Overview

It has often been assumed that the subjects of the Ottoman sultans were unable to travel beyond their localities - since peasants needed the permission of their local administrators before they could leave their villages. According to this view, only soldiers and members of the governing elite would have been free to travel. However, Suraiya Faroqhi's extensive archival research shows that this was not the case; pious men from all walks of life went on pilgrimage to Mecca, slaves fled from their masters and craftspeople travelled in search of work. Most travellers in the Ottoman era headed for Istanbul in search of better prospects and even in peacetime the Ottoman administration recruited artisans to repair fortresses and sent them far away from their home towns. In this book, Suraiya Faroqhi provides a revisionist study of those artisans who chose - or were obliged - to travel and those who stayed predominantly in their home localities. She considers the occasions and conditions which triggered travel among the artisans, and the knowledge that they had of the capital as a spatial entity. She shows that even those craftsmen who did not travel extensively had some level of mobility and that the Ottoman sultans and viziers, who spent so much effort in attempting to control the movements of their subjects, could often only do so within very narrow limits. Challenging existing historiography and providing an important new revisionist perspective, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Ottoman history.

Full Product Details

Author:   Suraiya Faroqhi (Ibn Haldun University, Turkey)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   I.B. Tauris
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 3.60cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.665kg
ISBN:  

9781780764818

ISBN 10:   1780764812
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   31 January 2014
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Introduction PART I: Travels An Edirne scholar on Ottoman architecture and politics: The pilgrimage account of Abdurrahman Hibri Bringing back keepsakes from seventeenth-century Mecca Evliya Celibi's tales of Cairo's guildsmen Travellers and sojourners in mid-sixteenth century UEskudar Immigrant tradesmen as guild members - or the adventures of Tunisian fez-sellers in eighteenth-century Istanbul Refugees and asylum seekers on Ottoman territory in the early modern period The image of Europe in the reports of the Ottoman ambassadors of the eighteenth century Ottoman travellers to Venice PART II: Artisans 9. Repairs to the Ottoman fortress of Hotin 10. Ottoman artisans under Selim III 11. Ottoman textiles in early modern Europe 12. Seventeenth and eighteenth-century artisans negotiating guild agreements in Istanbul 13. Christian and Jewish artisans in late eighteenth-century Istanbul 14. Istanbul halva manufacturers in the mid-eighteenth century 15. Keeping artisans in their places - or how to run a guild 16. At the Ottoman Empire's industrious core: The Story of Bursa Purchasing guild and craft-based offices in the Ottoman central lands

Reviews

A series of windows through which we catch glimpses of people on the move (for many different reasons) in the early-modern Ottoman Empire. Faroqhi brings to this subject both her wide-ranging interest - from slaves and artisans to ambassadors - and her almost unrivalled mastery of Ottoman primary sources, both published and unpublished. The result is not a quantitative or systematic study of mobility but a rich and varied panorama, with many telling anecdotes. Professor Erik Zurcher, Leiden University ""Suraiya Faroqhi has produced a mesmerizing study of a bustling empire on the move: ambassadors, wandering scholars and dervishes, renegade mercenaries, nomads, pilgrims, merchants, refugees, asylum seekers - and the great travel seventeenth-century travel fanatic Evliya Celebi. She has found space to chronicle the Turkish experience of such exotic places as Venice and Vienna and to survey such arcane trades as those of the firework manufacturers, scorpion catchers, donkey barbers and fez sellers. Her work, which is based on an unusually wide range of primary sources is also an important contribution to the study of international relations, as well as a guide to recent and impressive researches by Turkish historians in a dynamic and evolving field of study."" Robert Irwin, author of The Arabian Nights: A Companion

A series of windows through which we catch glimpses of people on the move (for many different reasons) in the early-modern Ottoman Empire. Faroqhi brings to this subject both her wide-ranging interest - from slaves and artisans to ambassadors - and her almost unrivalled mastery of Ottoman primary sources, both published and unpublished. The result is not a quantitative or systematic study of mobility but a rich and varied panorama, with many telling anecdotes. - Professor Erik Zurcher, Leiden University

Author Information

Suraiya Faroqhi is Professor of History at Istanbul Bilgi University and Emerita Professor of Ottoman Studies at the Ludwig Maximilians Universitat in Munich. She is a renowned authority on Ottoman history and her previous publications include: The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It; Artisans of Empire: Crafts and Craftspeople Under the Ottomans and Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (all I.B.Tauris).

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