scholarly journals Introduction

1991 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Suraiya Faroqhi

It is customary to say that the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century prosperity of the Ottoman Empire was derived from its control of international trade routes leading toward Europe. From this perspective, the closing years of the sixteenth century are regarded as a turning point. When English merchants entered the Mediterranean and the Dutch established a monopoly over the Moluccan spice trade, the Ottoman state lost its dominant role in world commerce, particularly since Ottoman merchants rarely left the Sultan's domain, and therefore did not control the sources of their trade goods. Loss of customs revenue contributed to fiscal crisis, which in turn led to political turmoil as overtaxed peasants fled their villages (Lewis, 1968, p. 27 ff.). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (or so it is claimed), world trade would have bypassed the Ottoman Empire entirely if it hadn't been for the transit trade in Iranian silk which continued into the 1730s, and a limited exportation of local grains and cottons, which did not become really significant until the high prices of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. From 1815 onward, the Ottoman Empire increasingly entered the orbit of industrializing Europe as a market for manufactured goods and a source of raw materials, and this state of affairs was made “official” by the signing of the Anglo-Ottoman convention of 1838.

Author(s):  
Murat Birdal

This chapter examines institutional change in the Ottoman economy with a focus on its financial crises and subsequent reform attempts. Traditional fiscal institutions functioned well until the late sixteenth century when the state introduced tax reforms and dismantled the traditional tımar system. In the nineteenth century, the administration sought solutions such as the debasement of the coinage and domestic borrowing to finance its deficits. In 1854, the government resorted to foreign borrowing and initiated reforms to improve its financial accounting to gain credibility in foreign markets. After twenty years of borrowing, the Porte defaulted in 1875, and in 1881 signed the Decree of Muharrem, which led to the establishment of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA). The OPDA era saw unprecedented levels of foreign direct investment and played a pivotal role in the integration of the Ottoman Empire into the world economy.


2009 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 809-845 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliana Balla ◽  
Noel D. Johnson

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.


Author(s):  
Anna Shapoval

Analysis of linguocultural aspect of temporal nominations is impossible without involving the problems of hrononymic lexics. Chrononyms is an important information resource of a certain linguaculture, some distinctive peculiarities of conceptual picture of the world. The aim of the experimental analysis is a complex examination of the linguacultural aspect of temporal nominations that function in Chinese and Turkish languages reflecting the concepts of the world. The research was based on the material of the novels “Imperial woman” by Pearl Buck and “Roxolana” by Pavlo Zagrebelniy. The analysis of recent scientific publications allowed us to come to the conclusion that the investigation of hrononymic lexics can involve different theoretical and practical principles. Being guided by the existing classifications of chrononyms (N. Podolskaya, M. Torchinsky, S. Remmer) the linguocultural features of the following types of temporal chrononymic lexical units were identified and studied in the research: georthonyms, dynastic chrononyms, tumultonyms, parsonyms and mensonyms. The results of the research demonstrate that not all lexical units of temporal denotation chosen from the above mentioned novels refer to the class of chrononyms. The group under investigation includes the following lexemes: nominations of the lunar calendar, nominations of the solar calendar, nominations of mixed calendar and temporal slots denoting day and night. The basic system of chronology in the linguiacultures under analysis is the dominance of the lunar calendar nominations (Chinese picture of the world — 51,0 %, Turkish — 40,4 %). In the analyzed works the nominations of the solar calendar are used less often in the Chinese picture of the world; the usage of this unit reaches 20 %, and this phenomenon is historically conditioned. Mixed calendar nominations (21 % of temporal units) are rather common, solar calendar nominations are refined by the monthly calendar; it can be explained by the fact that the Chinese mind is conservative towards the new temporal system. In the Turkish picture of the world 45 % of temporal vocabulary belongs to the solar calendar since in the sixteenth century only a lunar calendar operated in the Ottoman Empire. It should be mentioned that significant place in the temporal vocabulary of “Roxolana” is conditioned by the influence of the linguistic personality of the author, who was a Ukrainian.


1998 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Finlay

AbstractThree prophecies current in Istanbul in the summer of 1533 pointed toward the imminent destruction of the Ottoman empire by Christian powers. One of the predictions stated that Alvise Gritti, the bastard son of the doge of Venice, would bring about the ruin of the Ottomans. A confidant of Sultan Srlcyman and the grand vizier, Gritti was deeply involved in the war of the Ottomans against Charles V of the Spanish-Habsburg empire, as a commander of Ottoman troops, advisor on Western affairs, and governor-general of the Hungarian kingdom. Widely detested by Ottoman officials, however, Gritti felt that his power was waning in 1534. In response, he perhaps was inspired to play out his prophetic role, for he told an ambassador of Charles V that he would help the emperor's forces capture Istanbul while Sultan Süleyman was away at war. Millenarian speculation was widespread in the early sixteenth century, but sometimes it had direct consequences inasmuch as it came to figure in the calculations of political actors. Examination of the prophecies of 1533 within the context of the time nicely illustrates how prophecy and politics could have a reciprocal relationship, with the former being tailored to the occasion and the latter responding to apocalyptic foreboding.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 422-456
Author(s):  
Yuan Julian Chen

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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria F. Guerra

Abstract Gold alloys and silver alloys have always been widely employed in the production of significant objects. With high reflectivity, precious metals are perceived as both materials and colours, and can be skilfully combined to produce metallic polychrome effects. Because their structure and composition contain information on their manufacture, use, disclaim and degradation, items in gold and in silver enclose major information on the technologies employed by past societies and on exchange networks. This information can be acquired using appropriate analytical protocols, established according to the nature of the query and the characteristics of the objects. By using physicochemical techniques, it is possible to identify the technologies, materials and tools used by the artisan and, in particular cases, to situate the sources of raw materials and the workshops producing the objects, as well as to follow the trade routes. The aim of this work is to outline major achievements in the study of goldwork and silverwork based on the different physicochemical methods that are available, and to refer the analytical difficulties that have to be faced when studying objects made from precious metals. Based on several examples, three topics are addressed. The first concerns the major role of the techniques of exam when describing shaping, decorating, assembling and finishing; the second considers the search for metallic polychrome effects in some cultural areas; and the third discusses the challenging question of fingerprinting. A fourth section is dedicated to a short reflection on the difficulties related to the identification of the atmospheric corrosion mechanisms of precious metals.


Author(s):  
S. Rishko ◽  
◽  
G. Zaitseva ◽  
N. Burova ◽  
A. Sementsov ◽  
...  

Currently, many of the key archeology issues, including the questions of origin, relationships, migration and trade routes, sources of raw materials, technological methods in the processing of metals, etc., are difficult to solve by ar- cheology means alone. Progress in the field of instrumental technique regarding the advent of the latest-generation devices allows not only to perform elemental analysis of samples but also to measure with high accuracy different isotopes, which are often certain markers that characterize some components of the natural environment, provinces of habitation, diet and other important aspects of the ancient people’s habitat.


Balcanica ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 43-55
Author(s):  
Dragana Amedoski

The role of the vaqf in the Ottoman Empire, as in the whole Islamic world, was quite significant, especially in a period marked by the founding of new orien?tal settlements. The first endowers in the newly-conquered lands were sultans, begs and prominent government officials. Affluent citizens also took part in endowing their cities, and women are known to have been among them. The aim of the paper, based on Ottoman sources, is to shed light on the participation of Muslim women in this kind of humanitarian and lucrative activity using the example of the Sanjak of Krusevac (Alaca His?r) in the sixteenth century.


2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacopo Crivellaro

This essay analyses the legal regime of Capitulations in Egypt at the apogee of European abuse of the privilege in the Nineteenth Century. Capitulations were trade oriented prerogatives granted to the European merchants by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century. With the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, the privileges were gradually extended to the point that they awarded foreigners substantial immunity from local jurisdiction and legislation. Once Egypt acquired a greater self-governing status with the successful campaigns of Mohammed Ali, the Capitulatory texts were further enlarged by a substantial body of customary law. Custom operated to exempt Western citizens from compliance with local legislation and immunize them from local jurisdiction. The custom acquired an even more aggressive stance when foreign residents were permitted to sue local defendants and request the application of the foreign resident’s law. Essentially, Consular tribunals, by administering an inequitable consular justice often in favour of the foreign party eviscerated the local judicial system of any authority. The practice only subsided with the institution of Mixed Courts of Jurisdiction in 1876 and the Montreaux Convention of 1936.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
Mária Pakucs-Willcocks

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.


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