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This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Tile 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 ‘Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346© Copyright by Baki Tezcan, 2001. All rights reserved.ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the deposition of the Ottoman sultan Osman II (1618 - 1622) in 1622 within the iarger context of Ottoman history, ca. 1580 ~ 1650, In modern historiography, this incident is presented as a confrontation between a progressive sultan and reactionary forces, such as janissaries and men of religion. The present study, however, argues that this presentation reflects the concerns of the historians and intellectuals who created that interpretation at the turn of the twentieth century rather than providing an explanation of the incident. Searching for a progressive Osman discloses an absolutist one who could well be regarded as a “rebel sultan’ at his time. Looking for reactionary soldiers and men of religion brings out political actors who were protecting their established interests, Through detailed analyses of the enthronement of Mustafa I (1617 - 1618, 1622 - 1623) in 1617, his deposition in 1618, the reign of Osman II, as well as his deposition, this study suggests that the events in this period may be interpreted retrospectively as a political struggle between absolutists and their opponents that was, ultimately, a struggle to determine who was to exploit the resources of an economy in the process of monetarization..CKNOWLEDGEMENTS ‘The background education, research, and writing for this dissertation was made possible by grants and fellowships from Princeton University (1996-8, 1999-2000), the Ertegiin Foundation of the Department of Near Eastern Studies (1996-8), the Program in ‘Near Eastern Studies (Summers of 1996, 1997 and 1998), the Council on Regional Studies (Summer of 1996, 1998-9), the Langenberg Fund of the Center of International Studies (1998-9), the American Research Institute in Turkey (1998-9), Princeton University Graduate School (Summers of 2000 and 2001), and the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation (2000-01). I would like to thank the administration and staff of various libraries and archives for facilitating my research: Bibliothéque nationale de France, Beyazit Deviet Kutuphanesi, Diyanet isleri Baskanligi istanbul Muftilugu, Firestone Library, islam Arastirmalart Merkezi, Istanbul Universitesi Kutuphanesi, Milli Kutiiphane, Nuruosmaniye Kutdiphanesi, Public Record Office, Ragip Pasa Kutiphanesi, Silleymaniye Kutuphanesi, T.C. Basbakanlk Osman Arsivleri, and Topkapi Saray! Argivi ve Kiitiiphanesi, I would like to extend special thanks to Professor Abou-El-Haj from Binghamton University, whose seminars on Ottoman history at Princeton (1996-7) inspired me and many others, and who has continued to provide constructive criticism and encouragement since then. [ also owe many thanks to Professor Emeritus Sahillioglu from Istanbul University, who helped me a great deal at the Ottoman Archives with decyphering Ottoman documentsI will unfortunately not be able to thank one of the most encouraging and most helpful professors of Ottoman history in Turkey, Nejat Goyting, who gave me a great deal of his time while I was learning the siyakat script at his home in Uskidar and encouraged me to publish and to attend to conferences during my stay in Turkey. He passed away last spring. Mekam cennet olsun. My friends Emre Aykol, Elif Kumbasar, Semanur Tannikulu, and Umut Azak were great in providing emotional support during the painful research process. I owe special thanks to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University, Ahmet Evin, who generously provided me with invaluable office space and facilities in Istanbul. I would also like to thank Ayse Kadioglu, Leyia Neyzi, and Serif Mardin who showed genuine interest in my work. Thanks to Halil Berktay, I have been able to enjoy teaching during my research in Istanbul and to meet two wonderful students, Damla Acar and Berat Findikl, Here at Princeton, I owe thanks to many people. Without my friends Berrak Burgak, Bill Blair, Christine Philliou, Harry Bone, Ipek Yosmaoglu, Jamie Cohen-Cole, Janet Klein, Michael Reynolds, Mona Zaki, Mustafa Aksakal, Nenad Filipovic, Orit Bashkin, Roxani Margariti, Suhnaz Yilmaz, Tom Papademetriou, ard Yossef Rapoport, I would not have made it through this program of study. The graduate coordinators Karen Mink, Nancy Murphy, and Christine Riley, as well as our departmental administrator Kathleen O'Neill, provided emotional as well as professional support. I would like to thank Professors Peter Brown and Theodore Rabb for their stimulating seminars at the department of history, and Molly Greene for reading my work and providing encouraging feedbackvi Towe a lot to Professor Hanioglu, who introduced me to Ottoman documents, taught me late Ottoman history, read my dissertation, and saved me from a number of embarrassing mistakes. His suggestions will guide the future development of this work. Professor Cook has been my academic imam. | believe I will see him as the exemplary scholar for the rest of my life. He taught me a great deal about Islamic history. More importantly, however, he taught me how to write through the comments he has provided for every single piece of writing I submitted to him. { may still not be able to write as well as an English speaker, yet whatever there is, is his work. I would like to thank Professor Lowry for many things. He has always been very generous with his time and resource material. I spent many weekends at his office, learning how to read land registers and the provincial kanunnames. He also was most generous with his academic connections in Turkey, introducing me to a number of scholars, including late Nejat Goyiing. But most importantly, he provided a most stimulating environment for Ottoman studies at Princeton during the years I was taking seminars here. He and his wife Demet Hanim also provided a warm home for the Ottomanists at Princeton. Professor Itzkowitz has been my seyh and will remain so. It is not simply that he gave me ideas. Anyone who reads this work will see his scholarly impact on me, But there is more: the fact that this dissertation is finished is his achievement rather than. mine. He literally coached me through the whole writing process, just as he had done earlier with my M.A. thesis and my graduate education. I cannot disclose the secrets of my seyh, but let me say that it had more to do with being a wonderful human being than it did with being the great scholar that he is. I cannot express my thanks to him. All I canvii do is to promise that I will do my best to provide the same sort of advising to my students in the future Finally, I would like to thank my partner in life, Jocelyn Sharlet, for being the person she is. Last but not least, I must thank my mother and father and the rest of my family for their patience while I have been in the United States, and for their support while I completed my research in Turkey.vii Beg yildir sabirla bugiimii bekleyen anneme, ne yazik ki artk bes yil oncesini haturlayamayan babama, ve bana her zaman ikinci bir ebeveyn olmus olan ablama ve enisteme to Ayhan and Emine Tezcan, and Giilgin and Hiisnit TerekTABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract Acknowledgements Table of Contents Notes on Transliteration and Dates Introduction - The Making of Osman the Young (1-29) Presentations of the event in the 17" century 2. Presentations of the event in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries A re-evaluation Chapter I- Money, Money, Money (30-83) Introduction ‘The pare and the akge The Ottoman shahi and the expansion of its use until the early 1580s The Spanish silver, the expansion of shahi’s use in Anatolia, and the ake The scarcity of gold Conclusion Bee aw Chapter It— An Unusual Successio (84-134) 1. A fragile dynasty 2. The debut of Kosem Sultan’s political career 3. The role of Esad Efendi and his office a. The mevali aristocracy b. Esad Efendi c. The increasing political credit of the mufti 4. Conclusion (iv) we (xii) @) (3) (23) G8) (41) (50) (62) (69) (81) (88) (93) (98) (100) (116) (124) (130)Chapter III — The Court strikes back (135-174) 1. The viziers a. The Ottomans and the local power structures b. The mar and the meaning of its transformation c. The power of the viziers 2. The development of the court as a center of political power 3. The deposition of Mustafa and the enthronement of Osman [I Chapter IV — An Assertive Sultan (175-218) 1, A young monarch a. The early reign of Ahmed I (1603-17) and the question of regency b. Osman and Omer Efendi 2. Absolutist ambitions a. Ali Pasha: a court creature as a grand vizier b. The military campaign of Osman II against Poland in 1621 3. The young monarch looks for a new army a. The rise of the seghans b. The fine line between vizier and rebel, or legitimate and illegitimate armies ¢. Conclusion Chapter V- A Regicide (219-258) 1, The “Shadow of God” captured by his army ‘a. The aim of the “pilgrimage campaign” b. The uprising 2. The development of the Ottoman central army into a force of opposition against the court in the late sixteenth century a. The increasing size of the Ottoman army: just a military phenomenon? b. War asa political opportunity ¢. The evolution of the army into a political pressure group 4. Soldiers or financial entrepreneurs? Conclusion - The 1622 Incident in Retrospect (259-267) The kanunname of Mehmed I The real thing (137) 37) 39) (146) (ass) (166) (176) a7 (186) (194) (196) (199) (203) (205) (209) (215) (220) (221) (229) (240) (240) (244) (248) (250) (261) (265)xi Appendix — The Manuscripts of Tugi’s Chronicle (268-300) Manuscripts (269) Conclusions (295) Endnotes (01-413) Introduction Gol) Chapter I Gos) ‘Chapter IT G25) Chapter IIT G52) Chapter IV G63) Chapter V G88) Conclusion G97) Appendix (400) Bibliography (414-433) Catalogs and Reference Works (414) Archival Sources (415) Published Archival Sources (416) Primary Literary Sources (418) Secondary Sources (424)xii NOTES ON TRANSLITERATION AND DATES The basis for the spelling of Ottoman Turkish words in the text is the 12" edition of the New Redhouse Turkish - English Dictionary (Istanbul, 1992). Thus sil@hdar and temellik, but ulema. Ottoman Turkish quotations in the endnotes, however, are transliterated according to the transliteration system of the /slam Ansiklopedisi—with some modifications that make it possible to produce the whole text in standard Times New Roman font. Whenever possible the Anglicized version of Ottoman Turkish words is used, such as pasha, agha, sheik, and bey. Istanbul is preferred to Istanbul except for Turkish compound nouns, such as istanbul Universitesi An effort is made to differentiate between Ottoman Turkish terms and names, on the one hand, and Arabic and Persian ones, on the other. Thus both Kasim (Pasha) and Qasim are possible. I must admit, however, this effort creates problems, as it is hard to decide whether a particular person, place, or term is more Ottoman than Arab, or vice versa As for dates, common-era dates are preferred to hijri dates whenever the hijri date is definite enough. Date conversions are based on Wastenfeld’s Vergleichungs-Tabellen (Leipzig, 1854), yet some discretion is used if the day of the week comes out different than the one in the tables. M., S., RE.,R., CE., CB. §., N., L. ZE., Z. are used as abbreviations for the lunar months of the hijri calendar starting with Muharram and ending with Dhi'l-qa'daIntroduction THE MAKING OF OSMAN THE YOUNG On Wednesday. May 18. 1622. the soldiers of the Ottoman central army stationed in Istanbul gathered together in the central square of the city and submitted a number of sultan The next day. not satisfied with the answer of demands to Osman II. the reigni the sultan, they entered the palace. found Prince Mustafa, the uncle of Osman, and enthroned him. On Friday evening Osman was killed. Thus occurred the first regicide in Ottoman history, In seventeenth century Ottoman historiography the prevalent presentation of the event is that the soldiers had put forward quite justified demands to a sultan who was inexperienced and under the influence of misguided advisers. In modern Turkish historiography, however, the same event has been interpreted as a major frustration of the Ottoman Turkish reform movement, a victory of reactionary forces over progressive ones. According to this portrait, Osman II was the ancestor of Turkish reformers, @ forerunner of Mustafa Kemal. Had he not been deposed and killed by this military rebellion, Ottoman Turkish reform would have started three centuries earlier. In this introductory chapter I will place both interpretations in their proper contexts. Regarding the first one, it will be argued that its development was a result of the stakes that the seventeenth century authors had in the contemporary system. As to the second, I will show that it is an obvious product of the needs ofa new Ottoman Turkish elite in the early twentieth century. Finally, { will go back to the event and emphasize a central controversy regarding its meaning in the context of the seventeenth century, andthis will serve as a starting point for the rest of the study. Let me, however, first introduce the major actors and a sketch-map of the events leading to the 1622 incident, Osman, the son of Sultan Ahmed, was a thirteen-year-old boy when he was enthroned. He replaced his uncle Mustafa. Both Mustafa’s enthronement, which was unusual as he was not the son but the brother of his predecessor, and his deposition as a result of a palace coup a few months later, are controversial issues that will be discussed in the second and third chapters of this dissertation. The year in which Osman II was enthroned was the first year of troubles in Central Europe; these were later to spread all over the Continent and become what we call the Thirty Years’ War. Osman and his ministers were indirectly involved in the developments. Their connection was Bethlen Gabor, the prince of Transylvania, an Ottoman vassal. Gabor was elected king of Hungary, and a large delegation of the Protestant Union was in Istanbul in 1620 to negotiate Ottoman involvement on the side of the Union against the Catholic League. It was within this context that the young sultan decided to take the field personally for a military campaign against Poland. With Osman heading towards Poland in 1621, an Ottoman sultan was personally leading his armies to a campaign for the first time in some twenty years. The grand enterprise, however, came to a halt with a confrontation of the Ottoman and Polish forces at Khotin in today’s Ukraine. After quite a few weeks of inconclusive warfare, the Ottomans had to be satisfied with reclaiming the town of Khotin, which had recently been ceded to Poland by the prince of Moldavia, an Ottoman vassal. Osman II was frustrated at the performance of the army. First it was decided to winter in Edirne, probably so that a new campaign might be launched in the coming year. But this iseems to have faced strong opposition, as the sultan and the army eventually returned to Istanbul in the first days of 1622. It was against this background that the chain of events leading to the regicide started to unfold, Soon after Osman II’s arrival in the capital, preparations for a trip to the eastern provinces started under the guise of an imperial pilgrimage to Mecca. The sultan had apparently decided to create a new central army through recruitment in the provinces, with a view to dispensing with the current central army the interests of which seem to have been tied up with peace. The plan seems to have been for most of the central army to stay in Istanbul, but for the treasury to be taken along in order to finance the new recruitment. For the army in Istanbul and many others whose interests depended on the status quo this was a matter of survival, and they acted accordingly. On May 18, 1622, the day on which the imperial tents were to be transferred to the Anatolian side, the central cavalry and infantry troops gathered together and conveyed their demands to the sultan; these included the cancell: n of the pilgrimage and the execution of some of Osman II’s close associates. Respected scholars of religion and law are said to have legitimized their demands. The sultan agreed to give up the idea of the trip, but he was not prepared to execute his ministers. Since this was not a sufficient guarantee for the army corps, they entered the palace, enthroned Mustafa, and deposed Osman. Soon afterwards Osman was killed. The order may have been given by the new Sultan Mustafa, his mother, the new grand vizier Davud Pasha, or a combination.1, Presentations of the event in the 17 century To begin with, there are a number of short chronicles specifically devoted to the deposition of Osman II and the reign of Mustafa that followed. One of them, which eventually became the most influential source for seventeenth century Ottoman historiography on the incident,’ was written by a certain Huseyin, a retired bodyguard of the sultan.? His father, Sefer, was probably a devyirme, a Christian boy recruited for the army and converted to Islam." Hiiseyin himself was born in Belgrade, and followed his father in entering the janissary corps. After taking part in a few campaigns in Anatolia against the Jelali rebels, and in Iran against the Safavids, he was promoted to the solakan, the elite corps within the janissaries charged with the protection of the sultan on campaigns and outings. In these corps he served for eight years and then chose to retire. At the time of his retirement his total years of service in the army had not yet amounted to twenty.* As a retiree, his interests were endangered in the last months of the reign of Osman, since the sultan had just decided to cut the lucrative pensions of the janissaries. ‘Thus both as a former janissary and as someone whose retirement salary was at stake because of “Osmanist” policies, he had good reasons to be sympathetic to the cause of the soldiers who deposed Osman.* Haseyin, in his chronicle, tries to justify the actions of the soldiers by blaming various personalities around the Sultan for encouraging Osman in policies that were detrimental to the existence of the central army.° Moreover, he emphasizes that Osman. was given a chance to avoid the escalation of events, yet chose not to comply with the demands of the army on both the first and second days of the rebellion.” Furthermore, Huseyin underlines the legitimacy of the demands of the soldiers by emphasizing the| cooperation of the army with respected men of religion and law.* Osman and his supporters are held responsible for deviations from the Ottoman kann, or law, whereas the central army is depicted as the guardian of that law.” As for the regicide, Huseyin puts all the blame on Davud Pasha, the grand vizier of the new Sultan Mustafa," thus making a clear distinction between the deposition and the regicide. The former was a justified action undertaken by the soldiers of the central army, whereas the latter was the iative.'" evil act of one man acting on his own init Among other chronicles devoted to the deposition of Osman and the reign of Mustafa, that written by Bostanzade Yahya is worth mentioning.'? In contrast to Hiiseyin, Bostanzade came from a family that belonged to the mevali, or the “lords of law.” His grandfather, father, uncle, elder brother, and he himself, held important posts in the judiciary.'" Yet he has something in common with Huseyin, the retired janissary: interests at stake, High-ranking judges used to be granted titles of judgeships in small provincial towns for their retirement, or as a substitute for their waiting periods, i.e. the time span between two major positions during which they were not actively employed. They would send a proxy to this post, and he would collect the judicial fees on behalf of the judge. This institution, called arpalsk, guaranteed a steady source of income for the high level judges of the Empire, but was abolished in 1621 on the eve of the Polish campaign of Osman II. Moreover, by appointing two palace protégés to the chief judgeships of the empire, the sultan dealt yet another blow to the mevali, Thus, Bostanzade’s interests, too, were endangered by “Osmanist” policies. '* In his short chronicle Bostanzade displays sympathy for the demands of the soldiers engaged in rebellion.'* His central argument, not unlike Hiiseyin’s, focuses onthe inapt advisers of the Sultan.'® He is extremely harsh towards Omer Efendi, the tutor of the sultan, whom he sees as the main policy maker.'7 As for Osman II himself, Bostanzade portrays him as a ruler lacking experience and easily influenced by the ideas of his close associates. He is also critical of Osman’s refusal to comply with the demands of the soldiers, especially with regard to the execution of his associates.'* Regarding the regicide, Bostanzade makes a distinction similar to Huseyin’s, and holding Davud Pasha responsible for the murder of Osman IL.” In short, despite the difference in their background, Yahya and Hiiseyin share the same basic view of the rebellion. Osman II’s advisers and ministers were self-interested men and misled the sultan with misguided advice. Osman Il, in his turn, was young, inexperienced, and quite wrong in insisting on protecting his close associates when the soldiers demanded their heads. The soldiers” cause was justified, yet the murder of Osman was not. The regicide, however, was not really the work of the soldiers, it was Davud Pasha who was responsible for the crime. Although there are other short contemporary chronicles dealing with the times of the deposition,”” they do not display radically different views, except one. This is an anonymous account written in Hebrew.”" According to Shmuelevitz, the author seems to be an important personage in the Ottoman capital, informed of the appointments and dismissals of high functionaries and their whereabouts, so much so that his list of the functionaries of Osman II includes more names than are found in the Turkish chronicles.” Shmuelevitz states that the author is “an ardent supporter of Sultan Osman II, whom he described as a brilliant and talented young ruler, and of the sultan’s officers,“4 believing that Osman’s plan to put an end to the corrupt army of Yeniceris (Janissaries) and Sipahis (cavalry) was essential to bring order and security to the capital.”** Moreover, the anonymous author also indicates smanist” feelings in discussing the Abaza affair, a significant provincial rebellion that was later led by Abaza Mehmed Pasha, the governor of Erzurum, in the name of vengeance for the murder of Osman. He shows “a certain sympathy... especially toward Abaza’s systematic annihilation of the Yeniceris and their families in revenge for what he considered their responsibility for the n and execution of Sultan Osman I1.”** Thus there existed a different depos interpretation of smanist” policies and the military rebellion that brought them to an end. For centuries to come, however, that interprecation was not the prevalent one. Osman’s deposition and the ensuing regicide were also dealt with in longer chronicles of Ottoman history written in the course of the seventeenth century. One of them is the history of Hasanbeyzade.** Hasanbeyzade was a higher-level official in the imperial administration. His father, Kuguk Hasan Bey, was a graduate of the Palace School, hence probably a recruit of Christian origin. Hasan Bey worked in the imperial secretariat and reached the highest level in that organization shortly before his death. ** Ahmed himself started a college education, which would have prepared him for an academic or judicial career, but then switched to a scribal career after the death of his father. He took part in a few campaigns, and held several posts in the imperial secretariat and the provincial administration.” Piterberg holds that Hasanbeyzade’s “concluding section—the deposition of Osman II and most of Mustafa I’s second reign—is, in fact, a near verbatim and in foto transmission of Tugi’s [Hiseyin’s] text.”"* However, this view is based on a very limitedexamination of the manuscripts of this chronicle.” In fact Hasanbeyzade was unaware of Huseyin Tugi’s chronicle.°° Yet his depiction of the deposition and killing of Osman is not that different in tone. Hasanbeyzade shares with Huseyin a quite hostile attitude towards the close advisers of the Sultan.*' Mo-eover. he portrays the members of the mevali as sympathetic towards the demands of the soldiers."* As for Osman, his stubbornness is emphasized.** Regarding the regicide, it is again Davud Pasha who is seen as the main actor in the event. Hasanbeyzade’s personal experience of the reign of Osman and the military rebellion of 1622 might well be behind his “pro-military” and “anti-Osmanist” tone. There is strong evidence that he had professional troubles under Baki Pasha’s financial ministry during the last year of Osman II's reign.’ Baki Pasha, I have to note, was one of the sultan’s close associates whose heads were demanded on the first day of the rebellion. Besides, Hasanbeyzade was from a family of palace education background, and thus owed his position in the administrative elite of the empire to the current system. The possibility of change in the system, at a time when he was on bad terms with the people who were to administer that change, was a threat to him. In contrast to Hasanbeyzade, Pegevi presents the most sympathetic portrayal of ‘Osman II among the seventeenth century chronicles. Pegevi's paternal family had ry produced at least two generations of provincial military commanders in Bosnia who received their income from large fiefs (zeamer). He himself served in provincial offices of the central military organization in the capacity of scribe and administrator, and took part in a number of campaigns. Later he held a number of financial directorates in theprovinces. Sometime around 1641, after a rather long career, he retired end wrote his Ottoman history. While writing his history Pegevi had recourse to the work of Hasanbeyzade.”” Yet his account of the deposition of Osman has a different perspective from that of Hasanbeyzade.** Although Pegevi does not call the soldiers rebels, he does use the words “sedition (fime)” and “disorder (fesad)” in describing the actions of the army.” Neither Hiseyin Tugi nor Hasanbeyzade had used this vocabulary in relation to the soldiers. "° Moreover, the attitude that puts the blame on the misguided policies of the circle around Osman is not in evidence in Pecevi’s account of the event. Though Pecevi does not say anything in explicit support of the policies of Osman and his associates, he implies appreciation of Osman’s tutor Omer Efendi, a unique attitude in comparison with the other chroniclers. *! At some points Pecevi uses Baki Pasha as an oral source,”” and at others he mentions things that happened while he was in the presence of Baki Pasta, suggesting that, unlike Hasanbeyzade, he was on good terms with the finance minister of Osman I whose head was demanded by the soldiers. This closeness to an “Osmarist” on its own would not be enough to account for his different perspective. Yet there is another clue to link Pegevi to an “Osmanist” faction. After the deposition of Osman, Pezevi was appointed to the financial directorate of the province of Diyarbekir. The governor of the province was Hafiz Ahmed Pasha, who on the eve of the 1622 incident had come as far nity of Istanbul, to join Osman II with his own provincial ‘as Maltepe, in the close vi forces for the alleged pilgrimage.*' Once Osman was deposed and the trip cancelled, Hafiz Ahmed Pasha returned to Diyarbekir and kept in close contact with Abaza Pasha,another provincial governor, in planning a move toward Istanbul.** Pegevi displays a certain amount of sympathy for their cause.** Thus in contrast to Hasanbeyzade, whose family background and position vis-a-vis the “Osmanist™ web of alliances suggests a political stance that would be endangered by “Osmanist™ policies, Pegevi. with his provincial elite background and his closeness to the circles around Osman, provides a different interpretation of the military rebellion. Another contemporary author who produced an Ottoman history and included an account of the 1622 rebellion was Karagelebizade Abdulaziz (1592-1657). Like Bostanzade, he came from a family of scholars and judges. His grandfather, father, and elder brother had all served in high-ranking academic and judicial positions.“ Karacelebizade himself followed them in due course.“* Thus he belongs to the mevali, whose interests were endangered by “Osmanist” policies. This socio-political stance is displayed in his discussion of the reign of Osman [I and the military rebellion. Like Bostanzade, Karacelebizade is quite critical of the abolition of the arpaliks, the extraordinary powers of Osman II’s tutor Omer Efendi, and the appointment of palace protégés to the chief judgeships of the empire.” He does use the words sedition and disorder in reference to the 1622 incident, yet the context in which he uses this vocabulary is quite different from Pegevi’s. Karacelebizade argues that the higher echelons of the state and the close associates of the sultan stirred up sedition and disorder by entering a path that was contrary to the traditions of the Ottoman past. Osman, on his part, is implicitly criticized for being obstinate.” Thus Karagelebizade, despite his representation of the incident as sedition and disorder, is actually reprimanding the ministers of Osman II for the policies that brought about the rebellion.Just like Hiiseyin, the janissary chronicler of the event, Karagelebizade sees the | et i “Osmanist” policies as a deviation from the Ottoman tradition. The last contemporaneous author to be touched upon here is Katib Celebi, who included a discussion of the reign of Osman and the 1622 incident in his Ottoman history. Piterberg rightly points out Katib Gelebi’s preference for Huseyin Tugi’s pro-military and “anti-Osmanist” approach over Pecevi’s implicitly critical stance toward the rebellion and substantiates his argument with a close analysis of the texts."' Suffice it :o emphasize one point: Katib Celebi clearly blames the associates of Osman, whom he calls tactless and uneducated, for their ideas, which he describes as vicious and perverse, and sees as having provoked the rebellion. He also holds Osman responsible for accepting the perverse advice of his associates. This “anti-Osmanist” attitude of Katib Celebi might well be related to his background. Unlike Pegevi, whose family had a standing independent of the center and the central army in the provinces, Katib Gelebi was the son of a soldier in the central army. His father, a certain Abdullah, who could be a recruit of devgirme origin, was a member of one of the central cavalry units, the sildhdardn. It was his father who took the fourteen-year-old Mustafa, later to become known as Katib Celebi, to the same corps and then found a job for him in one of the financial offices sometime around 1622-3, just a year after the deposition of Osman II. Thus Katib Celebi was probably an eyewitness to the whole event as a teenager, though he never mentions this. One may very well assume that Katib Celebi’s father had strong stakes in the whole business of “Osmanist” policies. He could have lost his job, or at least status, if a mainly provincial army had replaced the current central military organization. Katib Celebi’s career, which started thanks to the12 ‘connections of his father as a soldier in Istanbul, would likewise have been endangered had the “Osmanist” policies been brought to realization. Thus he has to be read as someone whose interests were in line with the opposition to Osman IL As I have tried to argue with various examples, the attitude of contemporary chroniclers and historians towards the 1622 milicary rebellion seems to reflect their own standing in the socio-political structure of the Empire. Huseyin the retired janissary, Bostanzade the judge, Hasanbeyzade the scribe-tumned-administrator, Karagelebizade the professor, and Katib Celebi the soldier-turned-secretary, might have different opinions on a number of issues. Yet they all come together on one point: the soldiers had good reason to rebel because “Osmanist” policies were perverse and represented a deviation from the Ottoman tradition. What makes all these authors share this opinion is the fact that a move against the current form of the central army would have meant much more than just the replacement ofa central army with a new one recruited from the provinces. The central army in its current state was part of a much larger socio-economic structure that made it possible for people like these authors to keep their socially privileged statuses. A new army recruited from the provinces and used for an expansionist foreign policy would mean new strata of secretaries, administrators, professors, and judges, who would be ready to legitimize such a move. A new army meant a new exploitative mechanism the control of which would have been in the hands of a new elite. Pecevi and the anonymous Jewish author, despite their differences of degree in showing support for “Osmanist” policies and condemning the rebellion, testify for the existence of such an alternative elite.2. Presentations of the event in the late nineteenth and twentieth centut L will now jump over some two centuries and analyze the development of the modern interpretation of the 16 incident. By no means would I suggest that interpretation remained frozen throughout these two centuries. Yet the radical change in the depiction of the 1622 incident happened in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Quite a number of works on Ottoman history were written in this period because, first, the ever expanding system of secondary education necessitated the production of | textbooks, and second, closely related to and more important than the first, new ideologies on the political stage needed new histories. It is within this context that the modern portrayal of the 1622 incident developed. Let me start with a textbook, authored by Abdurrahman Seref (d. 1925). After being the director of the School of Public Administration (mekieb-i miilkiye), Abdurrahman Seref became a member of the Senate in the Second Constitutional Period that started in 1908 after the “Young Turk Revolution.” In 1909 he was appointed the official historiographer of the empire, a post he held until the abolition of the sultanate. This last official historiographer of the Ottoman Empire also became the first president of the Ottoman Historical Society.** Abdurrahman Seref wrote his textbook on Ottoman history, however, in 1895, much earlier than he was given his important offi °5 His depiction of the 1622 incident is quite different from the prevalent seventeenth century portrayal of the event, The soldiers are called rebels.“ Moreover, they, as a group, are given a larger responsibility for the regicide than ever before. The regicide is referred to as “the first14 i i ‘stain that besmirches the pages of [our] history.” Osman II's advisers are not reproached for their advice. Moreover, the first signs of Osman II's new role as a ‘reformer appear with the statement that “the state was hoping important services from the greatness of his zeal.“ Finally, the only seventeenth century historian whom Abdurrahman Seref refers to is Pegevi.’? whose portrayal of the incident had, contrary to ‘other contemporary chroniclers, an * )smanist” tone. At the turn of the twentieth century, a new political elite who identified themselves as reformers started to raise their voices. Abdurrahman Seref's work is a representative of these voices. Yet unlike the group to which Pegevi belonged in the seventeenth century, this new elite did in fact seize power after the “Young Turk Revolution.” This seizure is well reflected in Abdurrahman Seref’s appointment to the position of official historiographer in 1909. Thus from the early twentieth century on, one could expect the historiographical approach that was initiated by the anonymous Jewish author and Pegevi regarding the 1622 incident to become the prevalent one ina new context with new connotations. This contention is substantiated by the next work [will examine. Its author is Mehmed Murad Bey, known as Mizanct Murad (d. 1917). Murad was born in Daghistan. After an early education in Arabic and Koranic studies, he followed the Russian education system. In 1873, when he was nineteen, he migrated to Istanbul. Although he did not know Turkish then, he succeeded in entering the Foreign Ministry thanks to his connections and his knowledge of Russian and French. Up to 1895 he "eld various administrative positions, mostly related to education. He published a newspaper called Mizan, which was suspended many times. Between 1895 and 1897 Murad was abroad.Is He stayed in Alexandria and Paris, joining the Committee of Union and Progress, an Ottoman political opposition group then based in Europe. In 1896 he was elected its leader, yet in 1897 he resigned mainly because of disputes with Ahmed Riza, an Ottoman positivist. Then Murad, having cut a deal with the sultan’s agents in France and secured a reform proposal which will never put into effect by the sovereign, returned to Istanbul. During the Second Constitutional Period, in which the Committee of Union and Progress was one of the strongest political forces, Murad became a figure of opposition to the Committee, which had changed a great deal since 1897. After the March 31 incident in 1909, which was a reaction to the Young Turk Revolution, Murad was sent into exile. He started to write his Ottoman history on the Aegean islands of Rhodes and Mytilene in the early 1910s. In Murad’s history,” we find the re-creation of the 1622 incident with new connotations. To start with, Osman is acclaimed to be the “greatest sheik of Ottoman revolution:” He is the head of the ‘party of renovators’ comprised of Mustafa Ill, Selim III, and Mahmud I. Our predecessors could not appreciate his value. Let us at least save our successors from this defect. Let us no more be unaware of the identity and character of our own existence. After creating his hero, Murad discusses the possible consequences of Osman’s plans: the janissary organization was a tool of execution against the palace in the hands of the higher echelons of the state, the professors, and the judges. The sultan decided to extinguish this organization; if he had been successful, the men of greed would lose their weapon, because the ‘elements of the country (unsur-1 memleket) who were going to replace the janissaries, were not to become their blind tools. These new elements ‘were going to act in accordance with the feelings of the state, nation, and the country, that is to say in accordance with the local national ideas (efkar-t milliye-i mahalliye).°16 Here we see a totally new element introduced into the historiography. Since the fourteenth century, most soldiers making up the central army had been Christian boys, who were recruited by force, converted, and given an appropriate education. This fact had never been an issue in seventeenth century historiography. It could not really become one either, since at least half of the higher echelons of the state were men of Christian origin. Most queen mothers were non-Muslim slaves. The non-Turkish and non-Muslim elements were in the very heart of things Ottoman. Murad’s presentation of the soldiers as a foreign element in a national state is an early twentieth century phenomenon that has to do with the ideological and political developments of the time * Another new element introduced was the epithet that Osman IT seems to have acquired retrospectively, probably in the late nineteenth century. [have not come across any reference that called Osman IT “Osman the Young (Geng Osman)” in the seventeenth century. Actually there was an Osman the Young in the first half of the seventeenth century, but this Osman was a soldier who fought bravely during the re-conquest of Baghdad by Murad IV in 1638 and became the theme of a popular song. It was most probably either Mizanct Murad himself, or someone else among the Young Turks, or Young Ottomans who came up with this brilliant idea. In any event, calling Osman II “Osman the Young,” whether deliberately or not, was creating an association between the Young Turks and an Ottoman sultan who was retrospectively proclaimed to be the “greatest sheik of Ottoman revolution.” ‘This new representation of Osman II and the “foreign” janissaries, which is evident throughout Mehmed Murad’s work, became part of Ottoman historiography, both in Turkey and abroad. What is ironic, of course, is the fact that Mehmed Murad himself17 was not an ethnic Turk. His concept of nation was ore based on religious and local ties. ‘As you may have noticed in the quotation, he does not use words like Turk, or Turkish. Yet later, especially after the foundation of the Turkish republic, this religious and local understanding of the nation acquired a new meaning as will be shown, Another important point to note is that according to Mehmed Murad, the forces frustrating renovation are not only the soldiers. The soldiers are simply tools of higher echelons of the state, such as viziers, scholars of religion and law. and palace officers, This point, too, was going to be worked on quite often later by historians of the Turkish Republic, as will be indicated Thus starting at the turn of the twentieth century, the 1622 incident acquired a new meaning. It was the lost opportunity for renovation. the missed train that would have transported the Ottoman Empire into a new epoch. The janissaries and the higher echelons of the state, the forces that obstructed renovation, were thus responsible for Ottoman decay. This whole story was tailored for the needs of a new elite who identified themselves as reformers. They had just seized power and were in need of a history that would provide them with an ancestry. They needed to show that their ideas were not foreign to the Ottoman tradition. Moreover, they had to attack their predecessors for the failures of the past. In this story they found both: their ancestor was Osman, whom they seem to have anointed as “Young Osman.” The janissaries and the higher echelons represented the former elite of the empire, whom they were replacing. One may argue that Mehmed Murad cannot be taken to represent a whole new elite. This objection is justified, yet his version of the 1622 incident provided a prototype for others.18, In the mid 1920s, the Ministry of Education of the newly founded Turkish Republic published a Turkish History." Its author, Riza Nur, had been a member of the last Ottoman Parliament in [stanbul. In 1920, he joined the nationalist movement in ‘Ankara. He became a member of the cabinet and was one of the members of the delegation to Lausanne, where the nationalists succeeded in revising the post World War | treaty that was imposed on the Ottoman Empire. Back in the new capital, Riza Nur became an opposition figure and was forced to exile, He could only return after the death of Mustafa Kemal. Nevertheless his version of the Turkish past was probably the first official history publication of the new republic. Riza Nur’s presentation of the 1622 incident is similar to Mehmed Murad’s, yet has a different emphasis. Just like Mehmed Murad, he presents Osman IL as a reformer and suggests that had he been successful the empire would not have decayed. Riza Nur does not, however, does not follow Mehmed Murad in the portrayal of the soldiers as a foreign element. Instead he takes to extremes the notion that the soldiers were tools of ‘other forces, claiming that it was the religious scholars who provoked the soldiers to rebellion, who suggested that Mustafa should be brought to the throne, and who ordered the soldiers to kill the sultan. The attacks of Mehmed Murad and Riza Nur on the religious scholars have to be understood within the context of their political struggle. As members of a new intellectual elite, they had to distinguish themselves from and fight against the political influence of the w/ema whose political role they were trying to assume. For this they used the dichotomy between progress and backwardness. The common denominator of the new elite, whether liberal or conservative, was its identification of itself with19 progress. Thus the old intellectual elite, the scholars of religion and law, were blamed for their obstruction of progress, the positive norm of the day. In the late 1940s and early ‘50s, the new portrayal of the 1622 incident entered one of the most commonly used Turkish reference works on Ottoman history. In his ry, Ismail Hami Danigmend gave much more Annotated Chronology of Ottoman Histor than an annotation to the events of the reign of Osman II.” Osman was the first Ottoman sultan who felt the need of renovation. His reform plans included, among other things, the replacement of the degenerate. decaying, and cosmopolitan central military organization with a national one to be recruited from the Turks of Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt; moving the capital from Istanbul to Anatolia, thus replacing a cosmopolitan environment with a national one; and breaking down the political and financial power of the class of religious scholars.” As is clear from these examples Osman was re- evaluated in accordance with the nationalist and secularist ideology of the new intellectual elite of modern Turkey. Danigmend makes another point that is very telling for the meaning of Osman II in a narrative of the Turkish reform. A history of Ottoman Turkish reform that starts with Mahmud II in the early nineteenth century, or even Selim III in the late eighteenth century, has to deal with the uncomfortable claim that Ottoman reform is nothing but the result of the impact of the West. Danismend alludes, however, to the fact that Osman’s existence as a reformer is the proof of the national and local basis of the Ottoman Turkish renovation movement.” Thus thanks to Osman II, no one can claim that the basis of Ottoman Turkish reform was an inferiority complex vis-a-vis the West, or a wish to imitate western institutions20 In this way, Danismend reproduced Mehmed Murad’s points for a new audience with a new meaning. Mehmed Murad’s concept of a nation that was based on religious and local ties is replaced with an ethnic nationalism, Mehmed Murad’s remark, “{I]et us no more be unaware of the identity and character of our own existence.” is made explicit: we have our own history of reform, we did not start it because we felt inferior in relation to the West Not surprisingly, the soldiers are called rebels and held responsible for the obstruction of a great movement of reform. Thus the soldiers of the seventeenth century chronicles, who presented justified demands to a sultan surrounded by misguided advisers, in the twentieth century became rebels, responsible for Ottoman decay, What is ‘most interesting to note is that the sources used by the twentieth century historians are the very same chronicles of the seventeenth century. ‘One may ask whether this new interpretation of Osman as a reformer and the 1622 incident as an obstruction of Ottoman Turkish reform really became widely accepted. Am I just creating a straw man to knock down? Although I can cite quite a number of more recent Turkish sources, I will limit oneself to one significant example. ‘Yasar Yiicel, the president of the Turkish Historical Society in the aftermath of the 1980 ished a literary source for the reign of Osman II in military coup d’état in Turkey, pul 1983.” In his introduction, he states: “Osman II is the first Sultan who tried to solve the problems faced after Kanuni’s time.” “At the end of the XVIth century Ottoman Empire reached a turning point. The need for many radical changes began to be seen... This went on till the succession of Osman II to throne..." Thus, by presenting Osman II insuch a positive light, Yicel is turning upside-down the portrait of Osman II presented in the seventeenth century chronicles, with which he is quite familiar. A common point shared by all of the recent interpreters of the reign of Osman Il and the 1622 incident is elitism and étatism. It is the well-educated Osman II who recognizes all the problems and knows all the answers. Moreover. it is the state which initiates the reform movement and imposes it upon the society. Had Osman had a chance to execute his plans, he was going to carry the empire into the realm of progress. This elitist and étatist stance is closely related to the guiding principles of modern Turkish politics: reform led by an enlightened leader, change from top to down, and interference of the state in political development through military coup d’états. It is not only Turkish scholars, however, who subscribe to these views. Stanford ‘Shaw, the author of an Ottoman history that has been widely used as a textbook, and even a reference work, presents the reign of Osman and the 1622 incident in a similar vein. Shaw goes as far as using information extracted from an eighteenth century French novel, which makes a romance out of Osman II’s reign,” :o claim that the sultan was “[t]rained in Latin, Greek, and Italian by his Greek mother as well as Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian.””* He is cautious enough to say that “[w]hether Osman II was a conscious reformer or whether conditions and problems simply led him to actions that can be called reforms is uncertain.””” Yet Shaw is convinced that Osman II wanted to “Turkify” both the palace and the military organization. According to the author, [Osman 11] seems to have thought of moving the Ottoman government from the devshirme center of Istanbul to some place in Anatolia where Turkish traditions and values would prevail, perhaps to Bursa or Ankara, thus presaging the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk by some three centuries,But the rebels brought the reign of Osman to an end without any of his goals being realized. Thus the interpretation of Danigmend is more or less reproduced. This time, however, for an audience that appreciates Third World leaders guiding their countries through the troublesome path of development in accordance with modernization theory. My last example from the historical literature on Osman is a most recent one. In 1993 appeared an Ottoman Encyclopedia, authored by a committee most of the members of which might be identified as belonging to the “Turkish Muslim intelligentsia.” The presentation of the 1622 incident in this work is closer to Katib Gelebi’s account than to the modern interpretation.*” The remark at the end reads: “Thus Sultan Osman II, who took his place in history as a young and inexperienced ruler trying to open a new path, was killed on May 20, 1622."*' With the phrase “trying to open a new path,” the existence of the new interpretation is recognized, yet this view is balanced with the adjectives of “young and inexperienced.” The soldiers are reproached for engaging in rebellion, yet their demands are justified. The value of the projects of Osman II is recognized, yet what is emphasized is the fact that he was not realistic and did not have ‘enough experience. On the surface, this presentation seems to reflect an objective middle ground between the two alternatives. I would, however, argue that it has to be understood in relation to the Muslim critique of Turkish political development, which was mainly through reforms imposed from above on a society the opinions of which were not really consulted. Thus just as there were alternative interpretations of the 1622 incident in the seventeenth century, such as Pecevi’s and the anonymous Jewish author's, which reflected different interests at stake, so also in the twentieth century, there are some who23 choose to disagree with the hegemonic interpretation of the time and argue a line closer to the prevalent interpretation in the seventeenth, because it has more in common with their current agendas. | 3. A re-evaluation The radical difference between the seventeenth century interpretation of the 16: incident, in which the soldiers are more or less justified in their actions against Osman IT who is an inexperienced sultan under the influence of misguided advisers, and the twentieth century portrait of the event, in which the soldiers are rebels, or tools of conservative forces, who obstruct a reform movement that was going to change the outcome of Ottoman history, should by now be clear. The question is whether we would be justified in claiming that the new interpretation is created out of nothing. ‘The new interpretation has serious factual flaws. Osman definitely did not think ofa movement of Turkification. The soldiers he was allegedly going to recruit were to include Arabs and Kurds as well.*? Moreover, he probably did not decide to abolish the policy of recruiting Christian boys altogether. There is some evidence to the effect that he had sent out officers for precisely this type of recrui:ment a few months prior to his deposition.” Thus the modern interpretation cannot be substantiated and is clearly a product of an epoch in which nationalism is one of the strongest ideologies. One would therefore be justified in claiming that the new interpretation of the 1622 incident has much more to do with the political stage today than with the historical situation then, as I have tried to show throughout the discussion. The recognition of the unfounded character of the socio-political use of the past in the new portrayal, however,24 | does not in itself warrant discarding it. The gist of the new portrait that presents Osman in a positive light and the soldiers in a negative one is present in the alternative interpretations of the seventeenth century, such as Pegevi's and the anonymous Jewish author's, which were marginalized by the hegemonic ones. Similarly, a recent interpretation of the 1622 incident, that of the Turkish Muslim intellectuals, still carries important traces of the earlier portra Thus it is not a question of one or the other. Just as the recent interpretation reflects the political agendas of the interpreters, so also the contemporary ones display the stakes of the chroniclers in the current system. as I tried to indicate above. The only reason why the portrayal of the soldiers as having justified claims against a sultan who was badly advised became the hegemonic one in the seventeenth century is that the army and its supporters won the day in May 162: Shall we then discard everything and suspend judgment after deconstructing all of the interpretations? I would not. All of the narratives give clues about one thing that definitely happened: a serious conflict of interests within the political elite of the empire. Moreover, the literary products of the period pinpoint the main concept around which these interests tried to legitimize their claims: the “ancient law” (kanun-1 kadim). The modern interpretation of the 1622 incident is made possible through a retrospective evaluation of this controversy. The seventeenth century chroniclers make the soldiers blame Osman II for deviating from the path of the Ottoman tradition, which they may very well have done. Itis precisely this point that makes a new interpretation of Osman IL as a reformer, and of the soldiers as conservative forces, possible. What complicates25 the issue is that the men around Osman IT also use the same concept to justify their policy suggestions, Since the concept of innovation was a negative idea in and of itself until the onset of modernity, however. political policies were contested through the use of a quite different vocabulary. Pocock’s arguments in his Ancient Constitution hold for the Ottoman political stage as well.“ All of the so-called reform tracts of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries suggest reducing the number of soldiers in the central army, or cutting down the expenses of the treasury. Yet these suggestions are not they are explicitly referred to as a return to the presented as innovations, on the contrat “ancient law.” In one of these tracts which was presented to Osman II, for instance, the author states, while discussing the increasing numbers of the soldiers and the retirees in the infantry corps: ‘And what is contrary to the “law” (kanun) is that whereas the number of soldiers in the infantry corps (yevrigeri kullar1) used to be 12,000 in old times, today just the number of the retirees (korucu ve (ekaiid) has become more than 7,000. ‘The chroniclers make the soldiers justify their arguments in the same way: ‘On the same day the soldiers petitioned the sultan [Mustafa] for the execution of those who left the path of the “ancient law” (kanun-t kadim) and invented new laws.** Thus both the soldiers, who are represented in modem historiography as conservatives, and the statesmen, who wrote political treatises that were later called reform tracts, legitimize their suggestions with the same concept, ancient law. The 1622 incident has to be evaluated with an awareness of these different uses of the concept of ancient law. Both parties involved in the controversy are actually engaged in some kind of renovation with reference to a remote, or recent past. Yet both legitimize26 themselves as upholders of the very same past. What I will try to do in this dissertation is to map the various interest groups involved in the political developments that led to the deposition of Osman II in 1622. and then re-examine the incident. not in the context of a reformer ~ conservative dichotomy. but as a confrontation between different interest groups. Thus this dissertation aims to challenge both the seventeenth and twentieth centuries’ interpretations and place the deposition of Osman II in the larger context of Ottoman history in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. [ will show that this period witnessed a fierce political struggle between the absolutists and their opponents over the control of the empire. Osman Il was neither a stubborn sultan nor a progressive one. He was a ruler who carried the implications of his predecessors’ absolutist policies to such a point that confrontation became inevitable. As for the soldiers, and some jurists and men of religion who supported them, they were not that different from the many parliamentarians of the English Civil War in the 1640s, who claimed that “they were not fighting against the King, but to rescue him from evil counselors by whom he was being led astray."*” That is not to say that the men who deposed Osman II were parliamentarians. They could not be, as there was no parliament or any institution that even remotely resembled it in the Ottoman polity. Yet both the supporters of the parliament in England and the men who deposed Osman I! were in practice trying to limit what a sovereign thought he was entitled to do. Aside from dwelling upon this political conflict in order to present a new interpretation of the deposition and execution of Osman II, I will also make an effort to27 find some ties between the political conflict and the socio-economic developments of the period. This dissertation will suggest that the monetarization of the imperial economy in { | | the latter half of the sixteenth century might have had a certain impact on what political power aims to control, While in a less monetary economy political power concentrates on the exploitation of land and its produce. monetarization shifts the focus to cash flows. Thus the political conflict between the absolutists and their opponents might be evaluated as a struggle to determine who was to exploit the monetary resources of the empire. In order to substantiate the argument that the Ottoman economy was in the | process of monetarization during the second half of the sixteenth century, the first chapter of this dissertation is devoted to an examination of the Ottoman monetary crisis in the 1580s. This examination aims not so much to provide an explanation of the dynamics that brought about the crisis as it does to suggest that the crisis, which ends up evening indication of an economy that out significant arbitrage opportunities, might be seen as a is more market oriented and monetary than it had been in the past. ‘The remainder of the study will proceed as a chronological narrative of the period 1617 — 22 in four chapters (Chapters II-V), with thematic excursions devoted to the most significant political actors of the events discussed in each chapter. Thus while the second chapter examines the enthronement of Mustafa in 1617 in which the mufti Esad Efendi played an important role, it also presents an overview of the development of the mevali, or the lords of law, into a significant locus of power that was able to impose certain limitations on the power of the sultanate in the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries.28 ‘The third chapter studies the deposition of Mustafa and the enthronement of Osman Il in 1618, an event that was to a large extent the work of the chief black eunuch Mustafa Agha and his protégés. Thus the thematic focus of the chapter is on the development of the Ottoman court into a center of power in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This created new channels for the dispensation of royal patronage which aimed to bypass alternative loci of power, such as the households of the viziers and the mevali In the fourth chapter the short reign of Osman II (1618 ) is examined with a view to emphasizing his absolutist ambitions, Whether or not Osman II really planned to recruit a new army of seghanis, or mercenary soldiers, to realize these ambitions, his acts in the final months of his reign were perceived to be in this direction. In order to understand the contemporary connotations surrounding the idea of a segban army. the thematic excursion of this chapter dwells upon the political developments that led to the recruitment of segbanss by Ottoman administrators and local political leaders. The treatment of these figures by the Ottoman center turned the line that separated legitimate uses of power from illegitimate ones into a very thin one. Finally the last chapter provides an account of the deposition of Osman Il in 1622 in order to establish that the sultan was not as uncompromising toward the soldiers as most of the contemporary chroniclers portray him to be. Thematically, this chapter focuses on the Ottoman central army and argues that at least some of the men who made up this army were primarily financial entrepreneurs or businessmen rather than soldiers, while some others were partisans of particular viziers. Thus their involvement in Ottoman politics has to be evaluated accordingly.29 Thus the frequent military rebellions that took place in Istanbul in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as well as the one in 1622 have to be regarded as political confrontations between the court, which aspired to monopolize all channels of patronage, including financial assignments and appointments to positions that were usually controlled by the mevetli, on the one hand. and an alliance of its opponents, such as the mevail, certain segments of the army that were more involved in financial enterprises, and some viziers who were losing ground against court favorites. on the other. In the conclusion [ discuss whether one could conceptualize this confrontation in terms of an Ottoman absolutism and an Ottoman ideal of limited monarchy.30 Chapter I MONEY, MONEY, MONEY A group of close friends, Zubde Bey. Mirim Celebi, Sinanbeyzade Mustafa Gelebi, Karanfilzade, Baki Bese, and Ahmed Bey. who were all soldiers on the payroll of the Ottoman sultan in late sixteenth century Edirne, enjoyed drinking together. One day, while they were having drinks at the tavern, they noticed a poorly dressed dervish drinking quite a bit of wine all by himself. Ahmed Bey, the chief of the drinking party, sent him a platter of food to accompany the wine and also paid his bill. Although Ahmed Bey continued his favors to the dervish for a few days. the latter never joined them, excusing himself by saying that he did not mingle with people. On the day before he was to leave the city, however, the dervish came to thank them, He said it was time to reward them and asked them each to make a wish. “The gate of God is open, you will attain he added. They all laughed but, being good sports, they agreed your wishe: Zibde Bey, probably a cavalry soldier. asked for the local command of his © regiment (kethiida yeri). Mirim Gelebi, a cavalry soldier from a different regiment his own regiment, (silahdardn, the sword-bearers), asked for the same position ‘Mustafa Celebi wanted to become the superintendent of guilds and markets in Edirne. Karanfilzade requested the trusteeship of @ royal foundation, Baki Bese, the janissary, asked for 40,000 gold ducats. Then the dervish turned to ‘Ahmed Bey and insisted that he ; asks for something more important than what the others had wished for. Ahmed Bey refrained and said, “you tell me whatever you consider me worthy of.” After a momentary trance, the dervish prophesied: “They have given you the administration of31 the affairs of the Ottoman state. May your name be identical with the one on the royal seal!”" ‘At the time Ahmed Bey was apparently a member of the imperial cavalry regiments; he was the son of Haci Mehmed, an Albanian baker who was the head of the bakers’ guild in Edirne. hence Ahmed’s nickname Etmekcizade, the son of the baker. Subsequently Etmekcizade Ahmed Bey made enough capital for himself in the market of Edirne to get involved in the collection of the taxes imposed on the Gypsies. Later he became the finance director of the Danubian provinces. In 1599 he was the acting finance minister in the military campaign directed against the Habsburgs under the command of Saturci Mehmed Pasha. Despite his close association with Saturct, whose execution in 1599 caused him to be imprisoned for a short while, Etmekcizade could keep his position under the new commander-general of the campaign, the grand vizier Damad Ibrahim Pasha, Etmekcizade succeeded in becoming one of the rare finance ministers who enjoyed a long tenure, and he was made a vizier during the reign of Ahmed |. He even held the deputy grand vizierate in 1616 while the grand vizier Okiiz Mehmed Pasha was engaged in a military campaign against the Safavids. Thus the dervish proved to be right in his prophecy.” ‘The dervish also kept his promise to Baki Bese, the janissary, whose father was 2 merchant from Aleppo. Baki himself was born in Edirne and somehow managed to get into the janissary corps. After he was promoted to the cavalry regiments, he followed in his elder friend’s footsteps. In 1007/1598-9 he was the collector of taxes imposed on the Gypsies. In 1604, he had become the finance director of the Danubian provinces. Next year, he was the acting finance minister in the military campaign of the grand vizier32 Mehmed Pasha that resulted in the reconquest of Esztergom (in northern Hungary). In 1607, Baki accompanied the grand vizier Murad Pasha as the acting finance minister in the military campaign directed against Janpoladzade Ali, the “rebel” ruler of northern Syria, Baki Pasha was later to state that on his return from this campaign he finally succeeded in saving 40,000 gold ducats, the amount he had asked for from the dervish Despite some occasional downturns in his later career. Baki Bese of the tavern in Edirne became a pasha and died in 1625, still holding the finance ministry with the title of vizier There are a number of significant points to note about the careers of Ahmed Pasha and Baki Pasha as well as the dervish story. First, both men came to carry the title pasha and even became viziers while they were finance ministers. The status of the finance ministers had been rising since the late sixteenth century, and Ahmed Pasha was not the first one to carry the title vizier. The later seventeenth century even witnessed grand viziers whose backgrounds were in the finance ministry.* Second, not unlike many of their predecessors, both Ahmed Pasha and Baki Pasha faced charges of corruption and were dismissed at some point in their careers. Yet they were reappointed soon after their dismissals; they were regarded as indispensable as they knew how to handle money, which had become more important than ever for government. Most importantly, in contrast to many of their predecessors, the backgrounds of Ahmed Pasha and Baki Pasha had little to do with either the educational-judicial career, or the scribal one, the traditional background of finance ministers.° They and their drinking companions were soldiers, albeit of a different kind. Although we do not know anything about the social backgrounds of their companions, their names, such as33 Sinanbeyzade and Karanfilzade, suggest that they were not devsirme recruits. Moreover, what they aspired to become in life did not have much to do with a military career. Neither the supervision of guilds and markets in a town, nor the trusteeship of a royal foundation, would be expected to be the dream of a regular soldier. tis quite probable that Ahmed Pasha, Baki Pasha, and their drinking companions in Edirne, or their fathers, fad entered the central Ottoman army, which at this point was about to become a mainly financial institution rather than a military one as will be had started discussed in the fifth chapter, by means of money. Small investors of capi to see the Ottoman army as an institution that provided one with financial security and social status since, at least, the mid-sixteenth century. Some tax-farmers demanded entry into the military-administrative personnel as a reward for their services. A certain Haci Mehmed, for instance, perhaps the father of Ahmed Pasha, was the tax-farmer for the dues of the port of izmir in 1569. He had apparently specified in his contract that he 4 would be enlisted in the central cavalry troops upon the completion of his contract. On July 30, 1569, he was enlisted in these troops with a starting salary of 13 akges per day.” It would be hard to believe that this investor was planning to fight as an Ottoman soldier in order to expand the abode of Islam. More probably he saw entrance into the Ottoman army in a way quite similar to a well to do Frenchman buying his way into the noblesse de robe. ” Thus the dervish story with its real life follow up signifies, among other things, a new channel of social mobility that was opening up for men who lived in the Ottoman domains: financial entrepreneurship. Men whose power came from economic and financial activities rather than military ones began to permeate the privileged classes of34 Ottoman society in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Around the same time money that had always constituted the sinews of government acquired an unprecedented significance for the Ottoman administrative-military apparatus, which seemed to need it more than ever. i It seems that the demand for money on the part of the Ottoman administration and ] its supply by men capable of “producing” it came together in the late sixteenth century. j This neat combination, however, was the product of an ongoing process of transformation from a largely feudal economy that was based on local economic units only loosely connected to each other, to a mainly monetary economy relying on a wide network of 4 markets spread over the part of the Old World where the three continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa met. The political unity of this large geographical space, finally restored by the mid-sixteenth century after an interval of a thousand years, was the major cause of this process of transformation. The unprecedented commercial links established between the Ottoman Empire and other parts of the world which were either not known in the past, such as the New World, or not accessible directly for commercial purposes, 4 such as northwestern Europe, constituted an important factor that accelerated this transformation at this particular point in the history of the region. This process of transformation was to create new forms of political power, as is, evident from the transformation of the “amar, which will be discussed within the context | of the rise of the viziers in the third chapter. It was also to re-define the political role of the legal scholars and judges, who did not fail to engage in economic and financial i j 4 activities on a large scale, as will be touched upon in the next chapter. Finally, it was to change the nature of the Ottoman army, as will be pointed out in the fourth and fifth35 chapters. This socio-economic transformation, which was to influence all segments of the political life of the empire, could not fail to have an impact on the institution of the sultanate, which is the general theme of this dissertation to be articulated fully in the conclusion, This chapter aims to provide a general background for the whole dissertation by presenting evidence to support the hypothesis that a socio-economic transformation toward a more monetary and market oriented economy did take place in the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth century. I must admit that “monetary” and “market oriented” are vague concepts to describe a socio-economic structure. After all, the use of money, or its substitutes, is well attested for the greater part of recorded history. Moreover markets had been around for quite a while in all sorts of socio-economic structures. There are no strict criteria for whether one may call a certain economy “monetary,” in contradistinction to an economy based on self-sufficiency in which people barter their goods more frequently than they buy and sell them. .arket oriented” one, in ; Itis similarly problematic to identify an economy as a“ which production is undertaken with the purpose of supplying a relatively large market. The existence of commerce is not in itself a sufficient criterion, as commerce has been around \ce time immemorial. Although one could claim that an increase in the proportion of transactions that are monetary should be an indication of a more “market oriented” or “monetary” economy, safe and secure methods to determine even the amount of money in circulation at a given time do not exist. Moreover, simply knowing the amount of money would not be enough either. One would have to determine the purchasing power of the money in question, the size of the population, the prices of36 |goods and services, the velocity of circulation, the relative value of the non-monetary 4 sector, and so on. Finally even if one came up with a procedure for determining the ~monetariness.” or “market-orientedness” of an economy, most probably the procedure ‘could not be applied to the limited data available for the sixteenth century the economy of our own However, if one looks for certain qualities that exist times, the “market-orientedness” of which is beyond question, one can come up with some qualitative criteria that may help to determine whether a given economy in the past may justifiably be regarded as more “market oriented” or “monetary” than it had been at some previous time. The existence of opportunities for arbitrage, ie. buying goods in | one place in order to sell them immediately in another at a higher price, is one of these | qualitative criteria. In an ideal market economy one does not expect to find opportunities { to make excessive arbitrage profits, as the constituents of the market are well connected | so that monetary and economic information flow quickly, and the markets are closely tied / to each other so that prices of commodities do not differ a great deal from one place to another. If'a commodity is found to be much cheaper in New Jersey than it is in Pennsylvania, for instance, this information is supposed to spread quickly, the demand for the commodity in question is supposed to rise in New Jersey and decline in Pennsylvania, and the price difference is soon expected to disappear. ‘Thus looking at arbitrage opportunities in a given economy may provide one with an idea about the “market orientedness” of that economy, in the sense that if information regarding economic and monetary matters travels fast and a large number of people are able to act on it, arbitrage opportunities should quickly diminish. In a pre-modem economy it is hard to find a large set of data on the basis of which to compare prices in37 various localities at a given point in time; yet one always comes across comparative monetary values that may help to establish the price of money. which, before the spread of paper money, happened to be a commodity itself. An examination of the value of various silver currencies in the sixteenth century Ottoman Empire suggests that arbitrage opportunities existed a great deal more at the beginning of the century than they did at the end of it. Incidentally, this examination also suggests that the monetary crisis of the late sixteenth century should be seen more as a symptom of a socio-economic transformation, the existence of which is suggested by the decreasing opportunities for arbitrage in the + money market, than as a cause of it. As I will argue below, it is the economic forces in the silver market that diminish arbitrage profits and force the government to devalue and debase the currency. ‘The basic argument to be followed in this chapter is that had the connections between the various economic zones of the empire not been moving closer to create an imperial market web during the mid-sixteenth century, the famous American silver could 4 not have had such a large impact on the empire. The unification of a number of different economic zones with different currencies and gold ~ silver ratios during the sixteenth century resulted in closer ties between these zones that diminished arbitrage opportunities, This trend that diminished the profits of arbitrage became a significant © factor in the monetary crisis of the late sixteenth century. ‘Thus the presence of the socio-economic transformation toward a more market- oriented economy will be proven by indicating that the monetary crisis would not have ‘occurred in its absence. I must note, however, that, first, Ido not aim to elaborate on the38 causes of this transformation any further than what has already been mentioned above, namely the political unification of immense territories, which had many local economic centers, under the rule of a single empire, coupled with an extension of commercial ties with the rest of the world. Second, I will not engage in an effort to fully explain the dynamics of the monetary crisis other than showing that it could not have happened so drastically had the Ottoman world not been as economically united as it was by the end of the sixteenth century. L. Introduction In 1585-88, the Ottoman silver currency, the akge, was officially devalued by 100 % against gold ducat and foreign silver currencies, and its silver content was officially reduced by 44%. inalcik has asserted that these developments were “a consequence of the flood of American silver.” Yet the relationship he builds between the two events is based on the theory of a general price increase caused by the influx of American silver followed by devaluation and debasement that is inspired by Hamilton’s work.* Barkan’s explanation, based on a set of data for prices, was similar, These prices had started to increase prior to the debasement of the Ottoman currency, According to Barkan, this price increase was among the major causes of the debasement.” Sevket Pamuk, with a team of Turkish graduate students, has recently finished a study on Ottoman long-term wage and price trends. Although the study is not published yet, some of its findings are included in Pamuk’s recent monograph on Ottoman monetary history. The new price indices are quite similar to Barkan’s, yet Pamuk found an error in Barkan’s calculations of his index values for the years 1555 and 1573, theonly years in the sixteenth century prior to the devaluation for which Barkan had price data, After Pamuk’s correction, the price increases between 1489 and 1573 expressed in 4 rams of silver is reduced to 31 % from 60 %. “With this correction, it becomes more 4 difficult to explain Ottoman fiscal difficulties in terms of the Price Revolution or i imported inflation, following Barkan,” Actually. prices of barley, rye, ané wheat taken, from the inheritance records in Edirne by Barkan in another study also suggest that, despite some fluctuations in between, the prices of 1543 and 1582 are almost identical, suggesting that the sharp inflation actually started in the mid 1580s, around the time of the devaluation. "' Pamuk’s findings support Steensgaard’s argument that the increase in prices should have started after the devaluation and not before.'? Both Steensgaard and Pamuk funds available to the treasury.'? Pamuk, for instance, states that “[w]ith the outbreak of another war with Iran in 1578, the treasury began to experience shortages of silver for | suggest that the debasement of the currency has to be explained in terms of the scarcity of } payments to the soldiers." It is definitely true that the long wars of the late sixteenth * century created a heavy burden on the Ottoman treasury. However, I am not sure that the Safavid war that started in 1578 was the major cause of the Ottoman devaluation and 4 debasement in 1585-88 i If one looks at the balance sheet of the imperial treasury for the fiscal year 1582- || 3, four years after the outbreak of the Ottoman-Safavid war, Ottoman finances actually seem to be doing well. Despite the fact that Murad LI appropriated all of the revenues coming from Egypt, which was more than 520,000 gold ducats, or 31,200,C00 akges, for ‘4 his personal treasury, the central treasury had a surplus of 2,071,212 akges. + This40 surplus was achieved at a time when a total of almost 40,000 soldiers, including auxiliary —10,000 more than in 1574 troops and the cadets, were receiving regular sal Moreover. 10,000,000 ak¢es were sent to Ozdemirogiu Osman Pasha in Shirvan for the “eaymet of his troops, who should have numbered at least another 4,000.'° Thus as late |as 1583, in the midst of the Safavid wars, while the number of people who received | salaries from the treasury had increased by almost 50 % in the last ten years, the Ottoman _ treasury was able to deal with the situation despite the fact that almost 12 % of the trevenues were transferred to the personal treasury of the sultan and thus not available to eover expenditures. It is quite justified to ask, then, why the Ottoman government devalued the akce ‘by 100 % and then debased its silver content by 44 % in the almost immediate aftermath of this rosy financial picture. 1 would argue that the Ottoman government was reacting to the dictation of market forces, which had already debased the akge in practice as a result of the unification of Ottoman economic markets. In order to make this point, I will indicate that the Ottoman Empire comprised a number of different currency zones, and that these different zones of currency operated on different gold — silver ratios. The debasement of the ak¢e was mainly a result of the unification of these zones and the consequent disappearance of arbitrage opportunities as the different gold ~ silver ratios moved closer to each other. In the first section I will concentrate on the former Mamluk lands and argue that the gold ~ silver ratio in the Levant and Egypt was different from the one that existed in the central lands of the Ottoman Empire in the early sixteenth century. Yet by the mid- 4 sixteenth century this ratio had come much closer to that prevalent in Istanbul. In the4l next section, I will concentrate on the former Safavid lands of the Ottoman Empire. I will argue that the Persian devaluation of the mid sixteenth century changed the gold — silver ratio in these lands, making silver more valuable in terms of gold and creating an 4 ottoman silver currency that was overvalued in terms of its silver content. I will also show that these changes soon affected the Levant as well In the third section, I will emphasize that the arrival of Spanish silver intensified 4 i | the effects of this process by providing supplies to mint overvalued silver coinage that i literally invaded the empire, threatening a change in the gold ~ silver ratio at the center. | Asa result the value of the existing silver increased above the level that could support the | weight and fineness of the akce. In the last section I will argue that the results were | unwelcome to the Ottoman center as the Ottoman treasury had a vested interest in { keeping gold more expensive in relation to silver in the capital. Thus in 1585 the } ottoman administration was both acknowledging a situation created by market forces and 4 also making an effort to interfere with it by trying to increase the value of gold against 5 silver. Yet the effort of the administration was doomed to fail, and in 1600 the Ottoman ~ center finally revalued silver in relation to gold 2. The pare and the ake As will be pointed out in the next chapter, the Ottoman administration, at least initially, did not engage in an effort to unify its dominions under a single law, but simply continued to follow the local traditions of the areas that were brought under Otton:an 4 sovereignty in matters related to taxation and land law. Whether this was a conscious 4 policy, or just a reflection of necessity in the relative absence of efficient central political42 tools of enforcement, is open to question. Different regional currencies were among the local practices that the Ottoman administration continued to allow in its eastern and southern provinces. Thus the empire was divided into a number of currency zones in which coins of different weights constituted the major denomination in daily use. As I «will show later in this chapter, the Ottoman center benefited from the existence of these zones as long as gold was comparatively cheaper there than it was in the capital ‘The limits of these zones were probably dictated by the geographical limits of the economic units rather than by political boundaries. For instance, despite its political unity, the Safavid Empire included two distinct zones of currency.'” Moreover, although both greater Syria and the Hejaz had been parts of the Mamluk Empire, the two regions had slightly different units of silver currency.'* Thus as the political inheritor of different economic zones, the Ottoman Empire consisted of different zones of currency. Although the akge reigned supreme in the central lands of the empire, that is to say in the Balkans and western as well as central Anatolia,"” the eastern and southern lands that were conquered in the sixteenth century used quite a number of different i currencies. As will be discussed below, the exchange values of these currencies among 4 hemselves seem to have been determined by the regional gold~ silver ratios. Thus rather than the silver content of the coins in question, their varying values against the Venetian ducat, or the Ottoman su/tani,”” in their respective regions seem to have been the decisive factor in the establishment of their exchange values among themselves. In the former Mamluk lands of Egypt and greater Syria, for instance, the standard coin in circulation was heavier than the akce. Among a sample of 67 extant coins struck during the reign of Selim right after the conquest of the Mamluk Empire in Jidda (1),43 Damascus (23), Aleppo (33), Hudayda (1), and Egypt (9), if one excludes four coins the weights of which are equal to or lower than 0.73 g.. which was the standard weight of the akce at the time, the average weight of the remaining 63 coins is 0.89 g7* Although these weights cannot be relied on to make a judgment on the standard currency weight of the region, as the coins may have been clipped, they do suggest that the standard silver currency of the area was heavier than the akge, which is also suggested by archival evidence to the effect that the silver coins struck in Aleppo were worth 2 akges in 1518 and were called pare (piece), most probably after the nisf (half), or git’a (piece), the Arabic terms used to denote the standard Mamluk silver coin introduced by the Mamluk ruler Al-Mu’ayyad (1412-21), which was called by Europeans maidin, the corrupt form of mu ‘ayyadi. This difference in the silver standard of the region, as well as the name given to the local coins by the Ottomans, suggests that the Ottoman local currency in the area was modeled on the one used in Mamluk times. At the time the Ottomans conquered the Levant and Egypt, the currency situation in the Mamluk Empire seems to have been in disarray. Regarding the gold coinage, foun it is asserted that the Mamluk gold coins were of the same standard as the a = Venetian ducats and the Ottoman su/tanis,” the archival and literary evidence suggests Mamluk sultan’s reign to the next, or from Egypt to Syria.* This difference in weight ‘was also reflected in the exchange value of the ashrafi, which was lower than that of the Venetian ducat.** While the weight of the Mamluk gold coin was lower than the Ottoman one, that of the standard Mamluk silver coin was higher than the Ottoman akge, weighing around E ‘The weight of the Mamluk gold ashraf? seems to have varied from oneasa 44 14-15 gin the late fifteenth century, and then ca. 1.1 g. in the early sixteenth century, if one were to rely on the weight of extant coins.** When Selim conquered the area, the gold coins struck in his name followed the standard of the ashraff ghawris, which were the most recent and the least valuable in terms of silver currency."” Yet the silver coins struck in the name of Selim by the first governor of Egypt seem to have lowered standards even more,”* probably continuing the trend to debasement visible since the late fifteenth century, Then around 1522, new silver coins were struck that were decreed to be equivalent to the value of two and a half of the former c 's, meaning those that had been struck by the first Ottoman governor. 25 of the new ones were to be worth a gold ducat Although there seems to have been quite a bit of opposition to this policy,” the Ottoman “law code” of Egypt, dated to 1524-5, sanctioned it. According to this code, out of a 100 dirhems (307.2 g.) mix of silver and copper, which was to contain 84 % silver, 250 pares ‘were to be struck. Thus each coin was supposed to weigh 1.23 g. and contain 1.03 g. of silver. Moreover, 25 of these pares were to equal the value of the gold coin of Istanbul standard, which is also the exchange rate decreed for the gold coins of Sileyman in Egypt in 1522. Not surprisingly, the average weight of a sample of 4 silver coins struck in Egypt under the name of Stileyman is 1.22 g.*! Moreover, the future gold coins to be struck in Egypt were to follow the standard of Istanbul, ie. ca. 3.55 g. of pure gold for a sultani. Although there is no conclusive evidence, what seems to have happened in 1522, and been sanctioned in 1524-5, was a restoration of Mamluk standards, as the “law code” refers to the exchange rate of 25 pares to the ducat as the “old Law (kantun-1 kadim)."?45 Unfortunately we do not know the exact weight and fineness of the last Mamluk silver coins. Yet Ashtor, depending on the account of a contemporary European traveler, suggests that 25 of them made a ducat in 1507, and that the gold ~ silver ratio accompanying this exchange rate was 1:8.5, which signifies a sharp increase in the value of silver against gold implying a silver scarcity, as the ratio in 1497 according to Ashtor had been 1:11.12? The gold — silver ratio instituted by the Ottomans in 1522 and sanctioned in 1524-5 was 1:7.25.™4 Thus either the Ottomans had further increased the value of silver against gold, or this increase had already taken place between 1507 and 1517, the date of the Ottoman conquest. Actually Balog suggests that the Mamluk silver coins struck during the reign of Qansih al-Ghawri (1501-16) “were drastically reduced to amere | gram.”** If this last reduction had not changed the value of the ducat, the gold — silver ratio at the time the Ottomans conquered Egypt might have been around 1:7.14, quite close to the one instituted by the Ottomans. What is beyond question, however, is that the Ottoman administration sanctioned a gold — silver ratio that was quite different from the one prevalent in Istanbul, which was 1:11.3 at the time.** ‘The implication of these varying gold — silver ratios is great arbitrage sc A GDS SO ‘opportunities created by the large discrepancy between the value of gold in Istanbul and in Egypt. In Istanbul a gold ducat was worth 55 akces, each containing 0.73 g. of silver, 4 which would make a little more than 40 g. of silver, while in Egypt the same gold coin could be obtained with less than 26 g. of silver. Thus 26 g. of Egyptian silver coinage turned into gold was worth 40 g. of silver in Istanbul. Apparently silver was much more valuable in Egypt than in Istanbul, or gold was much cheaper, suggesting that silver would move south to Egypt while gold would head north to Istanbul. The latter part of46 this equation is verified by the fact that Egypt sent its tribute to the Ottoman capital in igold coins, a point to which [ will return below. What is also quite interesting to note is that while the Egyptian pare contained only 1.03 g. of silver it was valued at 2 ages in relation to the Ottoman akce, which was 0.73 g. of silver at this time.*” Intrinsically the pare should have supposed to cont been worth 1.4 akges, or 1.5 akges at the most. The Egyptian pare was definitely overvalued in terms of its silver content at the time. This does not seem to make much sense unless one considers the exchange value of the pare and the ak¢e against the gold ducat, Using the gold ducat as a measure at which 2 pares equaled 55 akces, one would expect the pare to be worth 2.2 akges (55/25). This is significantly closer to the official exchange rate of 2 akces to the pare. Thus it must have been the respective values of the pare and the akce against the ducat that established their exchange values against each other, more than a comparison of their silver contents ‘Thus the available evidence suggests that the Levant and the central lands of the Ottoman Empire had different gold - silver ratios in tne early sixteenth century. Although these two areas are close to each other, this difference was not new. For instance, for the Middle Ages, the ratio of gold to silver is suggested to have been 1:14 in the Muslim Middle East while it was 1:18 in Byzantium.** What this meant in practice ‘was that one could get a unit of gold in exchange for 14 units of silver in Cairo, go to ta 2S RCMP A AS convert it to gold again, and keep an extra 4 units of silver as a 28.6.% profit created by arbitrage opportunities. Apparently the same sort of vpportunity existed in the carly Constantinople, exchange that unit of gold for 18 unis of silver, bring the silver to Cairo, sixteenth century too, as the gold ~ silver ratios in Cairo and Istanbul were 1:7.25 and47 1:11.1, respectively. Arbitrage opportunities exist when two market zones function relatively independently from each other, implying less developed market relations between zones that are either not well informed about each other's respective conditions, ns to have an influence on each other. or not engaged in sufficient transact If, on the other hand, these two zones were economically well-connected to each other, the movement of silver to the place where it was more valuable in terms of gold would eventually alter the gold ~ silver ratios in both regions, bringing them to the same level, at which point profits of arbitrage would no longer be possible. It seems such a development did take place between the Levant and the central lands of the Ottoman Empire during the first half of the sixteenth century. Andrea Berengo, whose letters from Aleppo in 1555-56 are published, provides some data to establish the weight and the exchange rate of the pare in this period. He states that 6 maidins, or pares, are worth a mocenigo, a Venetian silver currency of almost pure silver that weighs 6.52 g. To be more precise, Berengo suggests that 47 mocenigos are exchanged for 300 maidins in terms of their weight, suggesting each pare contained 1.02 g. of silver.” This silver content is quite close to the prescribed silver content of the pare, 1.03 g. Yet the exchange value that he assigns to the ducat is 40 pares,*° which is well above the prescribed rate of 25 pares in the “law code” of Egypt. ‘At 40 pares a ducat with each pare containing 1.03 g. of silver, a ducat was worth 41.2 g. of silver in the Levant in 1555, which gives a gold ~ silver ratio of 1:11.6. In Istanbul, on the other hand, the ducat was worth 60 akges around the same time."! With each akce containing 0.73 g. of silver, this would make 43.8 g, of silver and indicate a gold ~ silver ratio of 1:12.34, Thus apparently in the thirty years between 1525 and 1555,48 the gold — silver ratio prevalent in the Levant came much closer to the one in the central lands of the Ottoman Empire, which may well be the result of increasing commercial connections, which evened out differences that had created arbitrage profits in the past Moreover, the exchange rate of the akce against the pare changed to reflect the new value of the ducat in pares. Whereas the pare was valued at 2 akces in 1525 when 25 pares made a ducat, later rates suggest that 1.5 akees were counted as the equivalent of the pare, which makes sense since now 40 pares and 60 akces equaled each other in the value of the ducat."* Even at the new rate of the pare against the ducat, silver was slightly more valuable in the Levant than it was in the central lands of the empire as one needed 2.6 g less silver to get a ducat in Aleppo than one would in Istanbul, Yet in the 1550s, Egypt was experiencing silver drainage to an unknown destination, where silver must have been more valuable than it was in the Levant, As is evident from an imperial order sent to the governor of Egypt in 1552, among the solutions offered was to increase the copper content of the pare? Although action was not in fact taken then, around 1565 a debasement did take place in Egypt the exact ratio of which is open to interpretation. An Arabic source suggests that it was around 8.7 %, yet depending on slightly different interpretations of the text, it might have been as much as 16.5 %.~* Interestingly enough, within the next few years the Ottoman akce went through @ similar debasement as well. Sometime around 1566, the number of akces to be struck from 100 aiirhems of silver increased from 420 to 450, decreasing the silver content of the akge from 0.73 g, to 0.68 g.** Yet neither in the Levant, nor in the central lands of the ,, did an official devaluation against the ducat take place, suggesting that the49 government was trying to make silver more valuable against gold. Most probably silver was moving to an unidentified destination where it was more valuable than in the Ottoman domains, as was suggested by the correspondence between the capital and Egypt in 1552, and the government was trying to keep it in the imperial zone by increasing its value against gold. In summary. available evidence suggests that the Ottoman central administration aimed to keep its currency zones separate by trying to restore pre-conquest rates, as was the case in Egypt in 1522-25. Moreover, the correspondence of 1552 between the Ottoman center and Egypt implies that the Ottoman administrators perceived their domains as different currency zones; otherwise a debasement limited to Egypt would not make sense. Yet the evidence also suggests that while the Levant had heen an independent currency zone in which a different gold — silver ratio operated at the time of the Ottoman conquest, by the middle of the sixteenth century this area was far better integrated into the markets of the central Ottoman lands as indicated by the change in its gold - silver ratio, which came quite close to the one prevalent in the central lands of the empire. Thus one may be justified in claiming that the forces of the market operated against the will of the administration by bringing the different currency zones closer to elaborate below. each other, a point Finally, the Egyptian debasement of ca. 1565 and the Ottoman one around the same time, which were not accompanied by a devaluation of the coinage in terms of the official value of the ducat, imply that a new currency zone in which silver was relatively ‘more scarce and valuabl. terms of gold was in close contact with the rest of the empire. According to the correspondence between Cairo and Istanbul in 1552, silver was50 moving toward this unidentified area, and the way to stop this movement was a debasement of the coinage. In the next section, [ will argue that this area was Iran, where a number of debasements seem to have occurred in the sixteenth century, as a result of which a different gold ~ silver ratio came to existence ‘The Ottoman shahi and the expansion of its use until the early 1580s The shahi was originally a Persian silver currency. and it continued to exist in Safavid Persia even after the Ottomans struck their own shahis following the conquest of the western Safavid lands during the reign of Sileyman, The market value of the Ottoman shahi in terms of the akge and the pare has a lot to do with the Persian shvhi, which was introduced by the Safavid ruler Shah Isma'il hereafter Ismail] in the early sixteenth century The Safavid coinage went through a number of debasements during the sixteenth century, but only those that happened in the second half of the sixteenth century had an impact on the Ottoman ake. Around 1501, at the outset of the reign of Shah Ismail, the Safavid 50 dinar piece called shahi weighed 9.4 g.“° According to Album, in 1518 the weight of the shahi was reduced to 7.88 g. Around 1530, it was further reduced to 6.22 g. Some ten years later, the shahi weighed 5.25 g. Around 1547, the shahi was debased once again to 4.67 g.*” Thus, if Album’s conclusions are correct, between 1501 and 1550, the Safavid shahi lost half of its silver content. The Ottoman akce, however, did not go through any debasements between 1491 and the reign of Selim If (1566-74) Consequently, one could claim that the Safavid debasements of the first half of the sixteenth century did not have an impact on the Ottoman ake.51 This picture, however, changes in the second half of the sixteenth century. Andrea Berengo, our Venetian merchant in Aleppo, supplies some valuable information regarding a Persian debasement in his letters of 1555. That year no silk arrived from Persia since the Safavid shah had himself bought 500 loads of it for export to India. Yet the shah paid the merchants half the price “because he has made the money the half of what they were worth in spite of the protests of the people, ie. his coins are called saie [shahi] they are worth here 18 so/di a piece, and he has made two out of one and given them out as good coin,~** In a subsequent letter, Berengo states that the new shahi the shah struck is worth half the value of the old, i.e. 9 soldi.” At this time, 18 soldi were worth approximately 0.11 gold ducats.*° Thus one would expect the former Persian shahi to be worth 4.5 pares, and the new one 2.25 pares at 40 pares, or maidins, per ducat Berengo cites the very same values.*' Berengo is not the only source which suggests that the Safavids undertook a major debasement in the 1580s before the Ottoman one. Braudel states that the Ottoman devaluation of the mid 1580s “followed a similar devaluation in Persia, ... which had devalued the currency by 50 per cent at a stroke.”*? Inalcik, perhaps relying on Braudel, states that a 50 % devaluation occurred in Persia in 1585."° Steensgaard asserts that he did not find any evidence in support of Braudel’s statement, although he is aware of the debasement that Berengo refers to, which he prefers to regard simply as “a 50% devaluation in terms of money of account."“! Pamuk believes that there might have been a devaluation in Iran in 1584, yet adds that the evidence is not clear.”* ‘These studies tend to concentrate on the 1580s to date the Safavid devaluation, 2 probably relying on Braudel’s wording. Braudel’s source for his statement is52 Zinkeisen.** The ultimate source, however, is an Italian physician, Minadoi (1540-1615), who, after taking his medical degree. traveled for seven years in the Ottoman dominions. In his book on the Ottoman-Safavid wars, which he wrote in 1587 with an account of the events of the war through the end of 1586, he states: Touching the reuenues of this kingdome (Safavid Persia], the common opinion is, that in the dayes of Kinge Tamas [Tahmasp (1524-76)] the crowne did yearely receaue into the Chamber of Casbin, foure of fiue millions of gold, which afterward he caused to be worth eight millions, by a sudden enhaunsing of the value of his coyne, geuing in commandment by most seuere Edictes, that ouer all his Empyre, for a certayne space, all the money that he had receaued, should bee taken and accompted for asmuch more as it was worth, and accordingly made pay to his souldiers and Sultans, & all other that were in his pay. Which example (mee- thinkes) was well followed by Amurat the now-king of the Turkes (Murad III (1574-95)], who receauing at the Citty of Cairo the Cechino of gold [sequin] for xliii. Maidini, he put it out againe in Constantinople, to pay his Capigi and lanissaries, withall Ixxxv. Maidini, commanding that it should be of that value ouer all the Citty, and countryes subiect vnto it.” Minadoi's account of the Persian devaluation thus suggests that it happened during the reign of Tahmasp, i.e. before 1576, and not in the early 1580s. The information provided by Minadoi, who apparently had not witnessed the devaluation but had heard about it, is in line with Berengo’s. Iran, since the fiscal reforms of the [Ikhanid ruler Ghazdn Khan (1295-1304), had a consistent system of money of account, according to which 10,000 dindrs made a oman (Mongol for “10,000"). Silver coins came in different denominations with their values assigned in dindrs.** What Berengo refers to as the old shahi was equivalent to the $0 dindrs piece of ca. 4.6 g. The information provided by both Berengo and Minadoi suggests that Tahmasp increased the value of this. coin to 100 dindrs and struck smaller coins of ca. 2.3 g. that he valued at 50 dindrs. ‘The numismatic evidence seems to support this hypothesis to a large extent. Album, whose work represents the latest research on Safavid coinage, suggests that the53 2.3 g. coins were worth half a shahi, i.e, 25 dindrs, in the period 1547 - 1552, while the shahis of 50 dinars weighed ca. 4.7 g. Then around 1553, the denominational value of the former shahi was increased to 80 dindirs, and that of the former half shahi to 40 dinars. In 976/1568-9, the denominational values of these two co'ns were further increased to 100 and 50 dincirs respectively, fixing the 50 clindr shahi at ca. 2.3 ga standard that survived well until 1596.” Album, however, does not provide any justification for his choice of 80 and 40 dindrs, which are based on the bist, i.e. 20 dindrs, as the main denominational value in the period 1553-1568, Berengo’s testimony from 1555 quoted above indicates that the main unit of the Safavid currency in circulation was the shahi. Moreover, Arthur Edwards, an English merchant who worked under the umbrella of the Russia Company. wrote to his superiors from Shirvan on April 26, 1566: “200 shaughes is a tumen.” Edwards also quotes most prices in shahis, suggesting that the shahi of 50 dindrs was the main unit of denomination at the time.®” Thus if Album’s bisti standard for 1553 -1568 be corrected with the shahi, the Safavi debasement of 1553, established by numismatic evidence, would corroborate the report of Berengo from 1555 and Minadoi’s reference to the reign of Tahmasp as the time of the Safavid devaluation. Unfortunately Berengo does not provide any information ebout the exchange rate between the Persian shai of $0 dinars and the Ottoman akge. Yet the exchange rate he quotes for the old Persian shahi, i.e. 4.5 pares, suggests that the old Persian shahi should have been worth ca. 7 akces or 5 pares prior to its devaluation.*' Interestingly enough the Ottoman shahi was also valued at 7 akces and 5 pares as will be discussed below. The new Persian shahi, then, should have been worth 3.5 akges. Actually, there is some