A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF JANISSARY SOCIO-ECONOMIC PRESENCE IN ALEPPO (1700-1760S)

Year 2022, Volume: 8 Issue: 1, 55 - 77, 14.06.2022

Yahya Araz

https://doi.org/10.30517/cihannuma.1131049

Abstract

Focusing on the Janissaries, and covering a period between the early eighteenth century and the 1760s, this study draws on preliminary findings from the Aleppo court records in order to highlight their roles in that city’s socio-economic life. Most of the Janissaries of Aleppo and their families came to the city from the surrounding countryside; they tried to survive and earned their livelihood as ordinary townsmen, a process that signaled their integration into the urban fabric. This process manifested itself in their relations with other social groups, their conglomeration in specific quarters, and their increasing capacity to diffuse into other areas and expand their economic activities. This expansion, however, resulted in a conflict between their interests and those of the eşraf/ashraf, who consisted of members of established merchant families, religious dignitaries, and other people who claimed to be descendants of the Prophet. The competing interests of the two groups, especially after the 1760s, were destined to reshape the role of the Janissaries in Aleppo as well as their interactions with other social groups. These confrontations also strengthened the solidarity and esprit de corps among the Janissaries, who had until then preferred to distinguish themselves by their ethnic, tribal, and country-based affiliations.

Keywords

eşraf/ashraf, credit relations, guilds, investments, Janissaries, yerliyye

Supporting Institution

European Research Council (ERC)

Project Number

849911

Yeniçerilerin Halep’teki Sosyal ve Ekonomik Varlığına Dair Genel Bir Değerlendirme (1700’den 1760’lara)

Abstract

Konu üzerinde devam etmekte olan araştırmaların ilk sonuçlarına dayanan bu makale temel olarak mahkeme kayıtlarını kullanarak 18. yüzyılın başlarından 1760’lara değin Halep yeniçerilerine odaklanmakta, onların ana hatlarıyla kentin sosyal ve iktisadi yaşamındaki rollerine değinmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Büyük bir kısmı kırsal kökenlere sahip Halep yeniçerilerinin ve ailelerinin ifade edilen dönemde çoğunlukla sessiz sedasız bir şekilde çalışarak ve uyum göstererek kente tutunmaya ve burada bir yaşam kurmaya çalışmaları kentlileşme sürecinin bir örneği olarak görülebilir. Bu süreci onların farklı toplumsal kesimlerle kurdukları ilişkiler, kentin belli mahallelerine yoğunlaşmakla birlikte her yerinde var olma kapasiteleri ve iktisadi faaliyetleri üzerinden somut olarak gözlemlemek mümkündür. Ancak etkilerinin genişlemesine paralel olarak kentin yerleşik ticari ve dini kesimlerini temsil eden ve Peygamber Muhammed’in soyundan geldikleri iddiasında olan eşraf/ashraf ile yaşadıkları gerginlikler 1760’lardan itibaren hem kentteki varlıklarının hem de farklı toplumsal kesimlerle ilişkilerinin yeniden tanımlanması sonucunu doğuracaktır. Bu gerginlik kendilerini etnik, aşiret ve coğrafi bağlar üzerinden tanımlamakta ısrar eden yeniçerilerin yeniçerilik kimliği etrafında birleşmelerini ve birbirlerine daha fazla yakınlaşmalarını sağlayacaktır.

Keywords

eşraf/ashraf, kredi ilişkileri, loncalar, yatırımlar, yeniçeriler, yerliyye

Project Number

849911

References

• Bab-ı Asafi Divan-ı Hümayun Sicilleri Mühimme Defterleri (A.DVNSMHM.d) 108: 110; 125. Cevdet Askeriye (C.AS) 505/21090. Cevdet Dahiliye (C.DH) 51/2539. Cevdet Maliye (C.ML) 70/3211. Hatt-ı Hümâyûn (HAT) 261/15056. Maliyeden Müdevver Defter (MAD.d) 6536.
• Halep Evamir-i Sultaniye Sicilleri/Aleppo Evamir-i Sultaniye Registers (HES) 2.
• Halep Şeriyye Sicilleri/Aleppo Court Registers (HS) 21; 40; 41; 42; 66; 67; 85; 87; 93.
• Abd el-Cubûrî, Ahmed Hüseyin, El-Kuds fi el-‘Ahd el-Osmânî (m. 1640-1799): Dirâse Siyâsiyye-‘Askeriyye-İdâriyye-İktisâdiyye-İctimâiyye-Sekâfiyye, Volume 2, Amman 2011.
• Barbir, Karl, “From Pasha to Efendi: The Assimilation of Ottomans into Damascene Society, 1516-1783”, International Journal of Turkish Studies, 1, (1979-1980), p. 68-82.
• Bodman, Herbert L., Political Factions in Aleppo, 1760-1826, Durham 1963.
• Burckhardt, John Lewis, Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, London 1822.
• Canbakal, Hülya, Society and Politics in an Ottoman Town: ‘Ayntāb in the 17th Century, Leiden 2007.
• ______, “The Ottoman State and Descendants of the Prophet in Anatolia and the Balkans (c. 1500-1700)”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 52, (2009), p. 542-578.
• Cuno, Kenneth M., “Was the Land of Ottoman Syria Miri or Milk? An Examination of Juridical Differences within the Hanafi School”, Studia Islamica, 81, (1995), p. 121-152.
• Darling, Linda T., The Janissaries of Damascus in the Sixteenth Century, Or, How Conquering a Province Changed the Ottoman Empire, Berlin 2019.
• Doumani, Beshara, “Endowing Family: Waqf, Property Devolution, and Gender in Greater Syria, 1800 to 1860”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 40/1, (1998), p. 3-41.
• Et-Tabbâh el-Halebî, Muhammed Râgıb, İ‘lâmu’n-Nubalâ bi-Târîh Halebi’ş-Şehbâ, Volume 3, second edition, Aleppo 1988.
• Greene, Molly, A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean, Princeton 2000.
• Hathaway, Jane, The Arab Lands Under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800, London and New York 2008.
• Hourani, A., “The Changing Face of the Fertile Crescent in the XVIIIth Century”, Studia Islamica, 8, (1957), p. 89-122.
• İnalcık, Halil, “Adâletnâmeler”, Belgeler, 2/3-4, (1965), p. 49-145.
• Khoury, Dina Rizk, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire Mosul, 1540-1834, Cambridge 1997.
• Knost, Stefan, “The Waqf in Court: Lawsuits over Religious Endowments in Ottoman Aleppo”, Dispensing Justice in Islam: Qadis and their Judgments, (eds. Muhammad Khalid Masud, Rudolph Peters, and David Powers), Leiden 2006, p. 427-450.
• Kokdaş, İrfan, “Land Ownership, Tax Farming and the Social Structure of Local Credit Markets in the Ottoman Balkans, 1685-1855”, Financial History Review, 24/1, (2017), p. 53-81.
• Lamprakos, Michele, “Life in the Khans: The Venetians in Early Ottoman Aleppo”, Muqarnas, 34, (2017), p. 125-155.
• Marcus, Abraham, “Men, Women and Property: Dealers in Real Estate in 18th-Century Aleppo”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 26/2, (1983), p. 137-163.
• Masters, Bruce, “Patterns of Migration to Ottoman Aleppo in the 17th and 18th Centuries”, International Journal of Turkish Studies, 4, (1987), p. 75-89.
• ______, The Origins of Western Economic Dominance in the Middle East: Mercantilism and the Islamic Economy in Aleppo, 1600-1750, New York and London 1988.
• ______, “Power and Society in Aleppo in the 18th and 19th Centuries”, Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, 62, (1991), p. 151-158.
• ______, “Aleppo: The Ottoman Empire’s Caravan City”, The Ottoman City between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul, (eds. Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters), Cambridge 1999, p. 17-78.
• ______, “Aleppo’s Janissaries: Crime Syndicate or Vox Populi?”, Popular Protest and Political Participation in the Ottoman Empire: Studies in Honor of Suraiya Faroqhi, (eds. Eleni Gara, M. Erdem Kabadayı, and Christoph K. Neumann), Istanbul 2011, p. 159-175.
• Meriwether, Margaret L., The Kin Who Count Family and Society in Aleppo, 1770-1840, Austin 1989. ______, “Women and Waqf Revisited: The Case of Aleppo, 1770-1840”, Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era, Leiden 1997, p. 128-152.
• Momdjian, Mary, “Halabis and Foreigners in Aleppo’s Mediterranean Trade: The Role of Levantine Merchants in Eighteenth-Century Commercial Networks”, Aleppo and Its Hinterland in the Ottoman Period, (eds. Stefan Winter and Mafalda Ade), Leiden 2019, p. 109-129.
• Öztürk, Mustafa, “1616 Tarihli Halep Avarız-Hane Defteri”, Ankara Üniversitesi Osmanlı Tarihi Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi Dergisi, 8/8, (1997), p. 249-293.
• Pakalın, Mehmet Zeki, Osmanlı Tarih Deyimleri ve Terimleri Sözlüğü, Volume 1, Istanbul 1983.
• Pascual, Jean-Paul, “The Janissaries and the Damascus Countryside at the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century According to Archives of the City’s Military Tribunal”, Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East, (ed. Tarif Khalidi), Beirut 1984, p. 357-369.
• Rafeq, Abdul-Karim, “The Local Forces in Syria in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”, War, Technology and Society in the Middle East, (eds. V. J. Parry and M. E. Yapp), London 1975, p. 277-307.
• ______, “Changes in the Relationship between the Ottoman Central Administration and the Syrian Provinces from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries”, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Islamic History, (eds. Thomas Naff and Roger Owen), Carbondale and Edwardsville 1977, p. 53-73.
• ______, “Economic Relations between Damascus and the Dependent Countryside, 1743-71”, The Islamic Middle East, 700-1900: Studies in Economic and Social History, (ed. A. L. Udovitch), Princeton 1981, p. 653-685.
• Raymond, André, Artisans et commerçants au Caire au XVIIIe siècle, Damascus 1973-1974.
• ______, “The Population of Aleppo in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries According to Ottoman Census Documents”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 16/4, (1984), p. 447-460.
• ______, Osmanlı Döneminde Arap Kentleri, (trans. Ali Berktay), Istanbul 1995.
• Reilly, James A., “Status Groups and Propertyholding in the Damascus Hinterland, 1828-1880”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 21/4, (1989), p. 517-539.
• Roded, Ruth, “Great Mosques, Zâwiyas and Neighborhood Mosques: Popular Beneficiaries of Waqf Endowments in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Aleppo”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 110/1, (1990), pp. 32-38.
• Shimizu, Yasuhisa, “16. Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında Halep Defterdarlığı”, Osmanlı Araştırmaları, 51, (2018), p. 29-61.
• Spyropoulos, Yannis, Κοινωνική, Διοικητική, Οικονομική Και Πολιτική Διάσταση Του Οθωμανικού Στρατού: Οι Γενίτσαροι Της Κρήτης, 1750-1826 [Social, Administrative, Economic and Political Dimensions of the Ottoman Army: The Janissaries of Crete, 1750-1826], University of Crete, Department of History and Archaeology, Ph.D, Rethymno 2014.
• ______, “Janissary Politics on the Ottoman Periphery (18th-Early 19th c.)”, Halcyon Days in Crete IX: Political Thought and Practice in the Ottoman Empire, (ed. Marinos Sariyannis), Rethymno 2019, p. 449-481.
• Sunar, Mehmet Mert, Cauldron of Dissent: A Study of the Janissary Corps, 1807-1826, SUNY-Binghamton, Ph.D, New York 2006.
• Şenyurt, Ali, “Yeniçeri Ortaları Yardımlaşma Sandıkları”, Kocaeli Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 33, (2017), p. 155-170.
• Uzunçarşılı, İsmail Hakkı, Osmanlı Tarihi, Volume 2, Ankara 1983.
• ______, Osmanlı Devleti Teşkilâtından Kapukulu Ocakları, Volume 1, Ankara 1988.
• Watenpaugh, Heghnar Zeitlian, The Image of an Ottoman City: Imperial Architecture and Urban Experience in Aleppo in the 16th and 17th Centuries, Leiden 2004.
• Wilkins, Charles L., “Patterns of Leadership in the Guilds of 17th-Century Aleppo”, Aleppo and Its Hinterland in the Ottoman Period, (eds. Stefan Winter and Mafalda Ade), Leiden 2019, p. 62-85.
• ______, Forging Urban Solidarities Ottoman Aleppo 1640-1700, Leiden 2010.
• Yaycıoğlu, Ali, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions, Stanford 2016.
• Yılmaz, Gülay, The Economic and Social Roles of Janissaries in a 17th-Century Ottoman City: The Case of Istanbul, McGill University, Institute of Islamic Studies, Ph.D, Montreal 2011. Yi, Eunjeong, Guild Dynamics in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul: Fluidity and Leverage, Leiden 2004.
• Ziyâde, Hâlid, Sicillâtü’l-Mahkemeti’ş-Şer‘iyye “el-Hikbetü’l-Osmâniyye” el-Menhec ve’l-Mustalah, Beirut 2017.