The Collapse of Rural Order in Ottoman Anatolia (original) (raw)
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RURAL SETTLEMENTS FROM OTTOMAN ANATOLIA: THE CASE OF THE DISTRICT OF KIRELI OF KONYA OF 1845
KARADENİZ ARAŞTIRMALARI
This research article is based mainly on Ottoman archival data of 1845. They are manuscripts, written in Ottoman Turkish. Ottoman government needs cash in the years of 1820s due to wars with Russia and Iran. To achieve this, the state demands extra taxes from all peasants of Anatolia. In this study, the economic situation of 22 small Muslim villages of the district of Kıreli of Konya of Anatolia was examined in outline. Agriculture and livestock were the main means of livelihood for the Muslim peasants. However, with the increase of the population, the economic resources were not enough for the Muslim peasants and the nomads (Yörük) living in this region. Many men had to leave their villages and went to the large cities to earn struggle for life. Ottoman administration founds them there and also taxes the labor. This was a very heavy practice for them. In the region, most villages were abandoned. The peasants had to be content with only rural resources. The vacant agricultural lands were immediately planted by the surrounding peasants.
For 20 years now peasants have been almost completely absent from Ottomanist historiography. Since 1996 almost no major monograph has been devoted to Ottoman peasant history. This is in sharp contrast with the importance given to the study of Ottoman rural society and economy by earlier Ottomanist historiography. In his classic History of the Ottoman Empire, published in 1973, the doyen of Ottoman studies, Halil İnalcık, described the Ottoman Empire as a ‘peasant empire’. However, for the Ottomanist historiography of the beginning of the twenty-first century, it looks as though the Ottoman Empire was rather an ‘empire of difference’. This volume follows an initiative aimed at putting the peasants back on the agenda of Ottoman history. However, we do not seek (how could we?) to reinstate the historiographical status quo ante nor to attack the many achievements of contemporary historiography. Moreover, unlike the earlier approach of some ‘classic’ works on this subject, which focused on the state as a central actor in rural societies, our symposium sought to investigate economic and social relations in the countryside of the Ottoman Empire not only from the viewpoint of the central administration, but also from that of rural societies. In the present volume, our aim is to highlight themes that are still today unexplored or deserve revision, and throw light on the diverse trajectories of rural economies and societies in the long history and vast lands of the Ottoman Empire.
HACETTEPE ÜNİVERSİTESİ İİBF DERGİSİ, 2016
In spite of the prevailing hegemony of petty commodity production over the structure of Turkish agriculture, Southeastern Anatolia Region of the country had been characterized by relatively high share of large scale agricultural estates usually cultivated by small tenants on a sharecropping basis until late 20th century. The peculiarity of the region was at the heart of the debates around agrarian question of Turkey and it was interpreted in the context of feudalism or semi-feudalism from 1960s onwards. This study aims to evaluate the theoretical premises of this debate through a critical approach by focusing on the economic, social and political aspects of Ottoman rule in the region from 16th century onwards to the early 20th century.
LAND USE DISPUTES BETWEEN NOMADS AND LANDOWNERS AS REFLECTED IN THE SİCİLS OF ANKARA, 1611-1629
ARCHIVUM OTTOMANICUM, 2017
Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden ARCHIVUM OTTOMANICUM concerns itself primarily with Ottoman history and Ottoman philology. However, the editors also welcome articles on subjects related to Ottoman studies in the history and culture of Europe, including in particular Danubian Europe, the Black Sea area and the Caucasus, and in the history and culture of the Arab and the Iranian lands, and Byzantium. The journal also aims at publishing unknown texts and materials and presenting them in facsimile.
Urban Development in Ottoman Anatolia ( 16.-17. Centuries)
1981
2. For the anecdote concerning Osman Gazi, compare Richard F.KREUTEHed.l Vom Hirten/ell /.ur Hohen Pfortc, Frühs-.eit des Osmanenreichcs nach dcr Chronik Denkwurdigkeiten und Zeiılflufıe des Hauses 'Osman' vom Derwisch Ahmed, gen&nnt 'Aşık-Paşa-Sohn,
Not the End of the World? Post-Classical Decline and Recovery in Rural Anatolia
Between the foundation of Constantinople as capital of the eastern half of the Roman Empire in 330 CE and its sack by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 CE, the Byzantine Empire underwent a full cycle from political-economic stability, through rural insecurity and agrarian decline, and back to renewed prosperity. These stages plausibly correspond to the phases of over-extension (K), subsequent release (Ω) and recovery (α) of the Adaptive Cycle in Socio-Ecological Systems. Here we track and partly quantify the consequences of those changes in different regions of Anatolia, firstly for rural settlement (via regional archaeological surveys) and secondly for land cover (via pollen analysis). We also examine the impact of climate changes on the agrarian system. While individual histories vary, the archaeological record shows a major demographic decline between ca .650 and ca. 900 CE in central and southwestern Anatolia, which was then a frontier zone between Byzantine and Arab armies. In these regions, and also in northwest Anatolia, century-scale trends in pollen indicate a substantial decline in the production of cereal and tree crops, and a smaller decline in pastoral activity. During the subsequent recovery (α) phase after 900 CE there was strong regional differentiation, with central Anatolia moving to a new economic system based on agro-pastoralism, while lowland areas of northern and western Anatolia returned to the cultivation of commercial crops such as olive trees. The extent of recovery in the agrarian economy was broadly predictable by the magnitude of its preceding decline, but the trajectories of recovery varied between different regions.