Travel and artisans in the Ottoman Empire : employment and mobility in the early modern era / Suraiya Faroqhi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Faroqhi, Suraiya, 1941- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Artisans--Turkey--History.

Artisans.

Occupational mobility--Turkey--History.

Occupational mobility.

Labor mobility--Turkey--History.

Labor mobility.

History.

Turkey.

Physical Description:

xxii, 296 pages : maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : I.B. Tauris, 2014.

Summary:

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 legitimately 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. Faroqhi 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 do so only within often very narrow limits. Challenging existing historiography and providing an important new perspective, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Ottoman history. -- Publisher.

Contents:

Elite Travellers

1 What an Ottoman ambassador might find out in Vienna 3

2 Material culture in Latinate Europe: as reported by eighteenth-century Ottoman ambassadors 26

3 'Seeking refuge in the Sultan's shadow': asylum seekers on Ottoman territory 44

4 Evliya Çelebi's tales of Cairo's guildsmen 64

5 Ottoman travellers in Venice 75

Ordinary People and their Products on the Move

6 Keepsakes and trade goods from seventeenth-century Mecca 89

7 Entering and leaving the Empire's industrious core: Bursa and its textiles 99

8 'Just passing through': travellers and sojourners in mid-sixteenth-century Üsküdar 117

9 Mostly fugitives: the trials and tribulations of slaves in sixteenth-century Üsküdar 129

10 The adventures of Tunisian fez-sellers in eighteenth-century Istanbul 143

11 Controlling borders and workmen, all in one fell swoop: from Istanbul to Hotin in 1716 156

Staying Put

12 Selling sweetmeats: Istanbul in the mid-eighteenth century 175

13 Where to make and sell cheap textiles in eighteenth-century Istanbul: a buyer's guide 186

14 In quest of their daily bread: artisans of Istanbul under Selim III (r. 1789-1807) 197.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 259-280) and index.

ISBN:

9781780764818

1780764812

OCLC:

826659580