The Collapse of Rural Order in Ottoman Anatolia: Amasya 1576-1643

293 Pages·2016·2.44 MB·English

by  Oktay Özel

The Collapse of Rural Order in Ottoman Anatolia
The Ottoman Empire and
Its Heritage
Politics, Society and Economy
Edited by
Suraiya Faroqhi
Halil İnalcık
Boğaç Ergene
Advisory Board
Fikret Adanır – Antonis Anastasopoulos – Idris Bostan
Palmira Brummett – Amnon Cohen – Jane Hathaway
Klaus Kreiser – Hans Georg Majer – Ahmet Yaşar Ocak
Abdeljelil Temimi
VOLUME 61
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/oeh
The Collapse of Rural Order in
Ottoman Anatolia
Amasya 1576–1643
By
Oktay Özel
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Graving: J.B. Hilair & J.A. Pierron, in M. Le Comte de Choiseaul-Gouffier, Voyage pittoresque
de la Grèce (adapted by Harun Yeni).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Özel, Oktay, author.
Title: The collapse of rural order in Ottoman Anatolia : Amasya 1576-1643 /
by Oktay Özel.
Description: Boston ; Leiden : Brill, [2016] | Series: The Ottoman Empire and
its heritage ; v. 61 | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by
publisher; resource not viewed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015047908 (print) | LCCN 2015046558 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004311244 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004309715 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Amasya (Amasya İli, Turkey)—History. | Amasya İli
(Turkey)—History. | Turkey—History—Ottoman Empire, 1288–1918.
Classification: LCC DS51.A45 (print) | LCC DS51.A45 O94 2016 (ebook) | DDC
956.3/8—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047908
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issn 1380-6076
isbn 978-90-04-30971-5 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-31124-4 (e-book)
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To Claire
∵

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of Figures and Tables xi
Notes on Spelling xii
1 Introduction 1
The Subject 1
The Sources (mufassal [= detailed] avârız Registers) 8
On the “Decline” Literature 12
2 Geography and Politics 20
Amasya: Making of an Ottoman Province 20
Rural Society: Limitations and Relational Matrix 39
3 Land, Society, and Empire (Through 1576) 44
Peasants and Nomads 44
Notables (mâlikâne Holders) 62
Timariots 76
4 The Collapse of Rural Order: A Comparison (1576–1643) 89
Settlement Patterns 92
Population 110
Society 120
5 What Happened? An Assessment 134
The Context Reviewed 136
Nature and Climate at Work 146
The Celâlîs 150
The Consequences 166
1643 Recontextualised 177
6 Conclusion 182
viii contents
Appendix I: Tahriṙ and Avârız Registers of Amasya 191
The Sources 191
Survey Orders for the avârız Register of 1643 197
Appendix II: Revenue Holders and Revenue Distribution 205
[Timarhâ-i] Eşkincüyân in c. 1480 and their Situation in Subsequent
Registers 205
Mâlikâne Holders, 1520–1576 (According to TT 387 and TK26) 210
Pious Foundations (vakıfs or waqfs) and the Revenues Allocated to
them in 1520 216
Zeâmet and Timar Holdings/Holders, c. 1480–1576 219
Revenue Distribution, c. 1480–1576 221
Appendix III: Urban Population in the Province of Rûm,
1520–1643 225
Appendix IV: Rural Settlements with their Tax-Paying Population
(c. 1480–1643) 227
Bibliography 249
Index 272
Map of Amasya 282
Acknowledgements
The present volume owes a great deal to generous support and help from a
number of mentors, colleagues, and institutions. I should first acknowledge my
mentors and colleagues from Hacettepe University, where I was working at the
time of the initial research: Bahaeddin Yediyıldız, Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, Özkan
İzgi, Mehmet Öz, Fahri Unan, Fatma Acun, and Yunus Koç. They gave me great
support throughout the research and contributed in different ways to the first
draft of the text; I am most grateful to them. I should specifically emphasize
the clarity of vision on the most complicated matters and the expertise on
defterology that Mehmet Öz shared with me throughout. Similarly, Evgeni
Radushev of Bilkent University has, during the past ten years, wholeheartedly
kept reminding me of what should be my primary job—i.e., this book; we have
exchanged views on many matters in long, enthusiastic, and colorful discus-
sions, while also working on a joint project on similar sources for the Ottoman
Balkans. I am more than grateful to Evgeni’s sincere and always fruitful collabo-
ration, which still continues at full speed to this very moment.
Secondly, I have great appreciation of the scholarship and meticulous-
ness in the historical profession of Colin Imber, under whose supervision I
carried out most of the research and wrote the initial version of this volume
as a doctoral dissertation in 1993. I am also grateful for his pleasantly liberal
attitude throughout my research and writing at the Department of Middle
Eastern Studies of the University of Manchester. Similarly, Colin Heywood and
Edmund Herzig gave me constructive criticism, encouraging me greatly with
their comments on the initial text. Evgenia Kermeli, Suraiya Faroqhi, Fikret
Adanır, Caroline Finkel, and M. Yavuz Erler shared their thoughts and mate-
rial with me and helped in various matters. Helen Pearson, Sarah Thomas, and
Maria-Ninu Stepanski translated materials from languages I could not read.
I am also grateful to all of them.
I was lucky enough to enjoy close collaborations, at various stages of the con-
stant rewriting processes, with such mentors and colleagues as Halil İnalcık,
Rifaʿat ʿAli Abou-El-Haj, Geoffrey Parker, William Griswold, Linda Darling,
Faruk Tabak, Nenad Moacanin, Kaan Durukan, Günhan Börekçi, Kayhan Orbay,
Sam White, Boğaç A. Ergene, Grigor Boykov, and Maria Kiprovska, who have all
kindly shared their opinions on the different versions of the manuscript lead-
ing towards this book and contributed greatly to my rethinking of certain mat-
ters. Though I retained most of my initial ideas and arguments in my venture
into a defterological study of the Ottoman 17th-century crisis, thanks to their
insightful criticism and suggestions, I have greatly improved what eventually
became the final manuscript for this book. The critiques of two anonymous
x acknowledgements
reviewers for Leiden Brill academic publishing, and, once more, of Suraiya
Faroqhi as one of the series editors, proved particularly useful in making me
realize that some of my arguments still needed further clarity, refinement, and
elaboration. I am deeply indebted to them, and any weaknesses this work still
retains is, needless to say, entirely mine.
During the research, I have worked in various archives and libraries in
Turkey, Britain, and the United States. Studying in the archives is not the easiest
thing: even the usual procedures often seem like unusually painful obstacles,
testing the limits of our patience. However, at such times, the constructive atti-
tude of a number of staff proves, as always, to make things immensely easier.
I am therefore thankful to all those who have done their best to make it bear-
able in the Prime Ministerial Ottoman Archive and the Atatürk Kütüphanesi
in Istanbul, as well as in the Tapu Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü Kuyud-i Kadime
Archive, the National Library, and the library of Turkish Historical Society in
Ankara. The same applies to the staff of the great libraries of John Rylands
in Manchester, SOAS and the Senate House in London, and the Widener of
Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Nahide Işık Demirakın, Seda Erkoç and Muhsin Soyudoğan, my younger col-
leagues at Bilkent University, were marvelous with their painstaking labour on
the reworking of the manuscript at different stages, providing me with most
timely support, both moral and technical. I greatly appreciate their sincere
friendship and unconditional presence whenever needed. The same applies
for the efforts of Chris Taylor and Michael Douglas Sheridan in improving the
English of the manuscript. Michael, in particular, has not only proven to be a
more than meticulous and pleasantly patient editor, but he has also been a
wonderful colleague of the same seventeenth century, whose contribution to
the final text is beyond any appreciation in words. I am grateful to him.
Finally, I owe more than a simple appreciation to Claire Thomas/Özel, who
had to make a sharp change from molecular biology to Ottoman history to
find herself in the alien world of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman
history. She was not only dragged into such a journey as a challenge yet with
painstaking labour on the first draft of the text years ago, but also ended up
in the intriguing new world of a strange country, Turkey. I owe the deepest
gratitude in love to her, with my sincerest admiration of her constant support,
patience, and tolerance, which started then, and unendingly continues to this
very moment.
This volume, then, is naturally and delightfully dedicated to her.
Oktay Özel
Ankara/Leiden, September 2015