Citation:
Thesis Type:
PhD dissertationAbstract:
This thesis examines the social and political transformations of the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century by tracing changes in the urban institutions of a provincial city. It considers the question of how, in a period of persistent warfare, urban populations reorganized local institutions in efforts to maintain social and political order. Making use of local court records and central state correspondence, the study focuses on the city of Aleppo, and investigates three basic social units---the residential quarter, professional organization, and patrimonial household---as they underwent two major developments: the diffusion of military cadres in provincial society and the regularized imposition of extraordinary taxes.
Focusing on the residential quarter, Part I demonstrates the instrumental importance of this unit in the taxation process and, challenging common assumptions, shows that the central administration remained capable of rigorous and probing cadastral surveys that are associated with "classical" sixteenth-century fiscal administration. Residents of urban quarters in turn met the demands of extraordinary taxation in a variety of ways, primarily by subsidizing tax payments for the poor, jointly managing declining properties, and establishing charitable endowments.
Part Two examines two types of professional organizations, guilds and military garrisons. The first chapter of this part considers shifting patterns of leadership and membership in four large guilds as ambitious guildsmen and merchants affiliated with military units and formed ties of clientage with soldiers. The second chapter examines the reverse process by which members of local, city-based military units became enmeshed in the social and economic life of the city. Over time, military units shifted from hierarchical organizations with unity of command to more egalitarian structures motivated by commercial interests.
Part III concentrates on one strategy of household-building among the social elite: the acquisition of slaves. Slaveholding in Aleppo was facilitated by the regular movement through the city of military cadres, who sold slaves either as a commercial venture or due to financial necessity. Valued as servants, soldiers, companions, and business agents, slaves assimilated to the households of merchants and military-administrative officials, in some cases providing critical human and material resources for the households' continuity.