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Travel and artisans in the Ottoman Empire : employment and mobility in the early modern era / Suraiya Faroqhi.

By: Faroqhi, Suraiya, 1941- [author.]Material type: TextTextPublisher: London ; New York : I.B. Tauris, 2016Copyright date: 2014Edition: New paperback editionDescription: xxii, 296 pages : illustration, maps ; 24 cmContent type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volumeISBN: 9781784536367; 1784536369Subject(s): 1288-1918 | Artisans -- Turkey -- History | Occupational mobility -- Turkey -- History | Labor mobility -- Turkey -- History | Artisans | Economic history | Labor mobility | Occupational mobility | Turkey -- History -- Ottoman Empire, 1288-1918 | Turkey -- Economic conditions -- 1288-1918 | Empire ottoman -- Histoire | Empire ottoman -- Conditions economiques | TurkeyGenre/Form: History.DDC classification: 331.7940956 LOC classification: HD9999.H363 | F37 2016Online resources: table of contents
Contents:
Elite Travellers -- What an Ottoman ambassador might find out in Vienna -- Material culture in Latinate Europe: as reported by eighteenth-century Ottoman ambassadors -- 'Seeking refuge in the Sultan's shadow': asylum seekers on Ottoman territory -- Evliya Çelebi's tales of Cairo's guildsmen -- Ottoman travellers in Venice -- Ordinary People and their Products on the Move -- Keepsakes and trade goods from seventeenth-century Mecca -- Entering and leaving the Empire's industrious core: Bursa and its textiles -- 'Just passing through': travellers and sojourners in mid-sixteenth-century Üsküdar -- Mostly fugitives: the trials and tribulations of slaves in sixteenth-century Üsküdar -- The adventures of Tunisian fez-sellers in eighteenth-century Istanbul -- Controlling borders and workmen, all in one fell swoop: from Istanbul to Hotin in 1716 -- Staying Put -- Selling sweetmeats: Istanbul in the mid-eighteenth century -- Where to make and sell cheap textiles in eighteenth-century Istanbul: a buyer's guide -- In quest of their daily bread: artisans of Istanbul under Selim III (r. 1789-1807)
Summary: "It has often been assumed that the subjects of the Ottoman sultans were unable to travel beyond their localities, since peasants needed the permission of their local administrators before they could leave their villages. According to this view, only soldiers and members of the governing elite would have been free to travel. However, Suraiya Faroqhi's extensive archival research shows that this was not the case; pious men from all walks of life went on pilgrimage to Mecca, slaves fled from their masters and craftspeople travelled in search of work. Most travellers in the Ottoman era headed for Istanbul in search of better prospects, and even in peacetime the Ottoman administration recruited artisans to repair fortresses and sent them far away from their home towns.Summary: In this book, Suraiya Faroqhi provides a revisionist study of those artisans who chose--or were obliged--to travel and those who stayed predominantly in their home localities. She considers the occasions and conditions which triggered travel among the artisans, and the knowledge that they had of the capital as a spatial entity. She shows that even those craftsmen who did not travel extensively had some level of mobility and that the Ottoman sultans and viziers, who spent so much effort in attempting to control the movements of their subjects, could do so only within often very narrow limits.Summary: Challenging existing historiography and providing an important new revisionist perspective, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Ottoman history."--Back cover.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode
Books Books The BIAA David H. French Library
Shelf 62 - Reading Room
H2n FAROQ 33112 Not for loan BOOKS-000000027228

"First published in hardback in 2014 by I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd"--Title page verso.

Originally published: 2014.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 259-280) and index.

Elite Travellers -- What an Ottoman ambassador might find out in Vienna -- Material culture in Latinate Europe: as reported by eighteenth-century Ottoman ambassadors -- 'Seeking refuge in the Sultan's shadow': asylum seekers on Ottoman territory -- Evliya Çelebi's tales of Cairo's guildsmen -- Ottoman travellers in Venice -- Ordinary People and their Products on the Move -- Keepsakes and trade goods from seventeenth-century Mecca -- Entering and leaving the Empire's industrious core: Bursa and its textiles -- 'Just passing through': travellers and sojourners in mid-sixteenth-century Üsküdar -- Mostly fugitives: the trials and tribulations of slaves in sixteenth-century Üsküdar -- The adventures of Tunisian fez-sellers in eighteenth-century Istanbul -- Controlling borders and workmen, all in one fell swoop: from Istanbul to Hotin in 1716 -- Staying Put -- Selling sweetmeats: Istanbul in the mid-eighteenth century -- Where to make and sell cheap textiles in eighteenth-century Istanbul: a buyer's guide -- In quest of their daily bread: artisans of Istanbul under Selim III (r. 1789-1807)

"It has often been assumed that the subjects of the Ottoman sultans were unable to travel beyond their localities, since peasants needed the permission of their local administrators before they could leave their villages. According to this view, only soldiers and members of the governing elite would have been free to travel. However, Suraiya Faroqhi's extensive archival research shows that this was not the case; pious men from all walks of life went on pilgrimage to Mecca, slaves fled from their masters and craftspeople travelled in search of work. Most travellers in the Ottoman era headed for Istanbul in search of better prospects, and even in peacetime the Ottoman administration recruited artisans to repair fortresses and sent them far away from their home towns.

In this book, Suraiya Faroqhi provides a revisionist study of those artisans who chose--or were obliged--to travel and those who stayed predominantly in their home localities. She considers the occasions and conditions which triggered travel among the artisans, and the knowledge that they had of the capital as a spatial entity. She shows that even those craftsmen who did not travel extensively had some level of mobility and that the Ottoman sultans and viziers, who spent so much effort in attempting to control the movements of their subjects, could do so only within often very narrow limits.

Challenging existing historiography and providing an important new revisionist perspective, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Ottoman history."--Back cover.