scholarly journals The Gulper and the Slurper: A Lexicon of Mistakes to Avoid While Eating with Ottoman Gentlemen

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Helen Pfeifer
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Partial Solution ◽  
The Self

Abstract This article examines the material culture and social etiquette of elite dining in the early modern Ottoman Empire. The challenges of eating with others were numerous, as the sixteenth-century Damascene scholar Badr al-Din al-Ghazzi (d. 1577) showed in painful and hilarious ways in his treatise entitled Table Manners (Adab al-Muʾakala). One set of problems stemmed from the objects structuring the meal, especially the relative dearth of crockery and cutlery. Far from making dining experiences simpler and more straightforward, as scholars have sometimes suggested, this necessitated greater cooperation between diners and made them vulnerable to individual misbehavior. Another set of problems arose from the material qualities of food, where sources of pleasure, handled poorly, could easily trigger disgust. The self-discipline that Ghazzi promoted in his manual offered a partial solution to these difficulties, but not a solution equally available to all.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
History Of Collecting ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Renaissance

This chapter explores the material culture of everyday life in late-Renaissance Paris by setting L’Estoile’s diaries and after-death inventory against a sample of the inventories of thirty-nine of his colleagues. L’Estoile and his family lived embedded in the society of royal office-holders and negotiated their place in its hierarchy with mixed success. His home was cramped and his wardrobe rather shabby. The paintings he displayed in the reception rooms reveal his iconoclastic attitude to the visual, contrasting with the overwhelming number of Catholic devotional pictures displayed by his colleagues. Yet the collection he stored in his study and cabinet made him stand out in his milieu as a distinguished curieux. It deserves a place in the early modern history of collecting, as his example reveals that the civil wars might be a stimulus as much as a disruption to collecting in sixteenth-century France.

Between the Islamic and Chinese Universal Empires: The Ottoman Empire, Ming Dynasty, and Global Age of Explorations

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 422-456
Author(s):  
Yuan Julian Chen
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
The Self ◽  
Global Age ◽  
Age Of Exploration ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
The Ming Dynasty

Abstract This article studies two sixteenth-century Asian texts: Khitay namah, a Persian travelogue about the Ming dynasty written by the Muslim merchant Ali Akbar and presented to the Ottoman sultan, and Xiyu, an illustrated Chinese geographical treatise with detailed travel itinerary from China to Istanbul by the Ming scholar-official Ma Li. In addition to demonstrating the breadth of Ottoman and Chinese knowledge about each other in the global Age of Exploration, these two books, written respectively for the monarchs of the self-proclaimed Islamic and Chinese universal empires, reflect the Ottoman and Chinese imperial ideologies in an era when major world powers aggressively vied for larger territories and broader international influence. Both the Ottoman and Chinese authors recast the foreign Other as the familiar Self – Ali Akbar constructed an Islamized China while Ma Li depicted a Sinicized Ottoman world – to justify their countries’ claims to universal sovereignty and plans for imperial expansion. Like many contemporary European colonial writers, Ali Akbar’s and Ma Li’s exploration of foreign societies, their literary glorification of their own culture’s supremacy, and their imposition of their own cultural thinking on foreign lands all served their countries’ colonial enterprise in the global Age of Exploration.

scholarly journals “Turkish” Textiles in South-Eastern and East-Central Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Evidence of Transylvanian Customs Accounts

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
Mária Pakucs-Willcocks
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Serial Data

Abstract This paper analyzes data from customs accounts in Transylvania from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth on traffic in textiles and textile products from the Ottoman Empire. Cotton was known and commercialized in Transylvania from the fifteenth century; serial data will show that traffic in Ottoman cotton and silk textiles as well as in textile objects such as carpets grew considerably during the second half of the seventeenth century. Customs registers from that period also indicate that Poland and Hungary were destinations for Ottoman imports, but Transylvania was a consumer’s market for cotton textiles.

On the Appropriation of Lexicographic Methods of Kemālpaşazāde’s (1468–1534) Glossary Daḳāyiḳu l-ḥaḳāyiḳ

DIYÂR ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-26
Author(s):  
Hasmik Kirakosyan ◽  
Ani Sargsyan
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Analysis Methods ◽  
First Time

The glossary Daḳāyiḳu l-ḥaḳāyiḳ by Kemālpaşazāde is a valuable lexicological work that demonstrates the appropriation of medieval lexicographic methodologies as a means of spreading knowledge of the Persian language in the Transottoman realm. The article aims to analyse this Persian-Ottoman Turkish philological text based on the Arabic and Persian lexicographic traditions of the Early Modern period. The advanced approaches to morphological, lexical and semantic analysis of Persian can be witnessed when examining the Persian word units in the glossary. The study of the methods of the glossary attests to the prestigious status of the Persian language in the Ottoman Empire at a time when Turkish was strengthening its multi-faceted positions. Taking into account the linguistic analysis methods that were available in the sixteenth century, contemporary philological research is suggesting new etymologies for some Persian words and introduces novel lemmata, which make their first-time appearance in Persian vocabulary.

Street “Luxuries”

2020 ◽  
pp. 413-433
Author(s):  
Melissa Calaresu
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fast Food ◽  
Food Choices ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nutritional Needs ◽  
Early Modern Rome ◽  
The City

The history of eating on the street presents particular challenges as the extant material culture is especially limited. This chapter reveals the variety of food sold on the streets of early modern Rome through the study of a series of images of street sellers printed in the late sixteenth century in response to the growing ethnographic interest of travelers to the city. This chapter turns on its head what was considered a luxury in the early modern economy as these images suggest the range of foodstuffs which cannot be simply understood as daily necessities to meet the basic nutritional needs of the city’s inhabitants such as raw cooking materials or hot fast food. Instead, these images suggest that labor-saving products such as hulled rice or even products such as sweetmeats, which were normally associated with the work of the steward of an aristocratic house and the elite “dressing” of the table, were being sold on the streets. Therefore, despite the inherent ephemerality of the act of selling and eating food and the lack of surviving material culture, these images reveal the complexity of determining social distinction through food choices in early modern Rome.

Zapisnaia kniga (Donation Records) of Volokolamsk Monastery, for 1550-1607

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 106-147
Author(s):  
Tom Dykstra
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Broad Cross Section ◽  
Parish Priests

Early modern Russian monasteries kept detailed records of donations by laity and by the monks themselves from before and after their tonsure. Gifts large enough to endow annual celebrations were generally recorded in the vkladnaia kniga (endowment donation book) and the kormovaia kniga (book of feasts), while smaller donations were recorded in the zapisnaia kniga (note book). The zapisnaia kniga translated here includes donations made over more than half a century to the Iosifo-Volokolamsk monastery, one of the largest in Russia in the sixteenth century. The donors form a broad cross-section of Russian society -- peasants and princes, men and women, parish priests and archbishops. The records provide detailed evidence of the material culture of their time, since donations were mostly in-kind. And the information they provide calls into question preconceived notions about how closely social class and wealth were tied together in Russia in this period.

Fiscal Crisis and Institutional Change in the Ottoman Empire and France

2009 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 809-845 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliana Balla ◽  
Noel D. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Fiscal Crisis ◽  
Fiscal Institutions ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Tax Farming ◽  
Fiscal Pressure

Why is it that some countries adopted growth enhancing institutions earlier than others during the early modern period? We address this question through a comparative study of the evolution of French and Ottoman fiscal institutions. During the sixteenth century, both countries made extensive use of tax farming to collect revenue, however, uncertain property rights caused by fiscal pressure led to different paths of institutional change in each state. In France, tax collectors successfully overcame the collective action costs of imposing constraint on the king. In the Ottoman Empire, tax collectors faced prohibitive transaction costs to organizing in a similar manner.

scholarly journals POLITICAL BOUNDARIES AND TERRITORIAL IDENTITY IN EARLY MODERN CENTRAL EUROPE: THE WESTERN FRONTIER OF TRANSYLVANIA DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-38
Author(s):  
Florin Nicolae ARDELEAN
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Territorial Identity ◽  
Accurate Definition ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Academic Debate ◽  
Complex Subject

The last decades have witnessed an increased interest in the research of territorial delimitations in late medieval and early modern Europe. A significant part of the academic debate has been focused on identifying and defining the process of transition from medieval frontiers, perceived as vague areas of contact, to modern linear borders. The aim of this article is to analyse the organization of the western confines of the Transylvanian Principality during the decades in which this state was formed, from the Ottoman conquest of Buda (1541) until the ratification of the Speyer Peace Treaty (1571). Throughout this period, the territorial delimitation of Transylvania from the Ottoman Empire and Habsburg Hungary was an ongoing process, marked by both military confrontations and diplomatic negotiations. Through a critical reassessment of the most relevant Romanian and Hungarian literature on this complex subject and the analysis of new data from official and narrative contemporary sources, I have tried to identify which were the most important political and military events that shaped the western borderlands of Transylvania. A fundamental objective of my research is to provide an accurate definition for the western region of the Transylvanian Principality, contributing thus to the general debate on the nature of frontiers/borders in sixteenth century Europe.

From Scipio to Nero to the Self: The Exemplary Politics of Stoicism in Garcilaso de la Vega's Elegies

PMLA ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 116 (5) ◽  
pp. 1316-1333
Author(s):  
E. C. Graf
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fault Line ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Classical History

What is the relation between the early modern lyric and the emergence of modern individuality? Garcilaso de la Vega's verse from early-sixteenth-century Hapsburg Spain is generally assessed in terms of Petrarchan protocols. But the emotive effects of love fictions and pastoral nostalgia provide an incomplete aesthetic picture. Garcilaso's poetry also concerns modern power relations; some of his most impressive tropes allude to contemporary politics. This essay argues that Garcilaso's most experimental and self-assertive verse manifests the political animus of the Toledan nobility. On the ideological fault line between the municipal capitalists of the comunero revolution (1520–21) and the combined forces of the Hapsburg imperialists and the great landed aristrocracy, Garcilaso's “ultramoderate” lyric production problematizes the imperialist-aristocratic coalition by demystifying the official interpretations of recent events as divinely ordered repetitions of classical history. The peculiar self-referential implosion of the second elegy suggests that the emergence of modern individuality occurs in response to imperialist tyranny.

Shipyards

2021 ◽  
pp. 40-58
Author(s):  
Faisal H. Husain
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Naval Warfare ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fluvial Landscape ◽  
Military Revolution

This chapter provides a history of the Ottoman naval fleet in the Tigris-Euphrates basin, referred to as the Shatt River Fleet in Ottoman bureaucratic parlance. In the sixteenth century, the Ottomans established two shipyards at the two ends of the river basin—Birecik in the north and Basra in the south. Both shipyards became the administrative centers for the Ottoman navy operating on the Tigris and Euphrates. Boats of the Shatt River Fleet were fitted with light cannon pieces and played a combat and support role in Ottoman military operations. They cooperated with land forces based in the fortresses to strengthen the Ottoman presence along the eastern frontier. While the literature on naval warfare in the early modern Military Revolution has largely focused on developments taking place at sea, this chapter shows how the Ottoman Empire adapted the latest naval technologies to a fluvial landscape.

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