JANET - Janissaries in Ottoman Port-Cities: Muslim Financial and Political Networks in the Early Modern Mediterranean - ERC-StG 2019 (original) (raw)
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This special issue is a small collection of essays devoted to the history of the Janissaries, intended to be the first of a series of publications investigating the processes which made the Janissary Corps a formidable political and socioeconomic power both at the Ottoman center and in the provinces. The papers included here were originally presented in a workshop which took place at İzmir Kâtip Çelebi University in September 2021, organized within the framework of the ERC-funded project “JANET: Janissaries in Ottoman Port-Cities: Muslim Financial and Political Networks in the Early Modern Mediterranean”, a project dedicated to examining the functioning of Janissary networks in the Ottoman Empire, conceiving of them as inextricably connected to Muslim political and economic networks across a large part of the Mediterranean.
“Janissary Politics on the Ottoman Periphery (18th-Early 19th c.)”
M. Sariyannis (ed.), Halcyon Days in Crete IX: Political Thought and Practice in the Ottoman Empire, Crete University Press, Rethymno, 2019
This article’s main thesis is that, towards the end of its lifespan, the Janissary corps became an increasingly decentralized institution, a fact that redefined its political stance vis-à-vis the Ottoman government, its own central administration, and its involvement in provincial politics. In the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, its political power passed mainly into the hands of low-ranking officers who, following a series of reforms, took the opportunity to create strong bonds with local societies. Such bonds were defined by ‘bottom up’ networking processes which allowed the regiments in the provinces to follow a trajectory of increased administrative and financial emancipation from Istanbul. The result was the creation of various different organizational structures inside the corps, which developed their own distinct characteristics, but remained, at the same time, organically connected to one another through a common institutional and legitimizing frame of reference. By taking a close look at the case of the Janissaries of Crete, I thus argue that in order for us to understand the political role of the Janissaries in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, we have to start looking away from Istanbul and examine their history mainly from a provincial perspective.
Mediterranean Historical Review, 2019
The aim of this paper is to explore the economic environment of Izmir at the beginning of the nineteenth century through the interreligious entrepreneurial networks that brought together Muslim notables, reaya merchants and European consuls. It focuses on the Kâtiboğlu Mehmed Efendi, a notable (ayan) and voyvoda of Izmir as well as a member of a well-known Muslim family of the region, who was executed in 1816 and his property confiscated by the state. Through the analysis of Kâtiboğlu's business cooperation with a Christian entrepreneur of Izmir, the paper aims to reveal the ayan's commercial network, the nature of his cooperation with the Christian merchant, and his stance towards the western community of Izmir. Also, the paper explores the background and economic activity of his Christian partner. In a more general framework, the paper brings to the fore the economic activity of the Muslim notables as well as aspects of the contemporary economic processes in Izmir and their political connotations.
This course will examine the early modern Mediterranean as a contact zone, “where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power”. The Mare Nostrum in the early modern era was, although still a contested “frontier” between Islam and Christianity, also a “borderland”, a highway of transport, trade and cultural exchange, where different societies met and overlapped. With its focus on the “contact zone”, the course concentrates on people who crossed the frontiers of the early modern Mediterranean and facilitated the contact by getting in touch with different civilizations and diverse cultures. Agents of civilizational contact, i.e. spies, merchants, sailors, renegades, soldiers, corsairs, slaves, ambassadors, etc. are at the center of this course. Around their stories, several thematical issues of early modern Mediterranean history will be discussed: Conversion, flow of information, long-distance trade networks, intra-communal relations, extraterritoriality, religious tolerance, migration, resident diplomacy, transformation of identity, articulation of difference, technological transfer, cultural values, patronage, etc. These agents unintentionally undertook the hard task of harmonizing the cultures and unifying the economies and societies of the early modern Mediterranean. They were the means by which ideas were diffused, goods and cash transferred, technologies spread, information gathered and political agreements made. Their stories gave rise to the criticism, prevalent among the historians of the Early Modern Mediterranean, of the Orientalist disposition to consider “East” and “West”, “Islam” and Christianity” as trans-historical self-contained binaries and to depict an irredeemable hostility between different civilizations of exclusivist nature. By concentrating on this specific group of people on the margins of civilizations, the course discusses the extent to which the undisputed geographical/climatological unity of the Mediterranean resulted in its unity as a historical entity, i.e. socio-economically and culturally. It seeks an answer to the question to what extent relations between different societies and cultures were shaped by the geographical unity the sea imposed upon its peoples. Other historical trends come into focus inevitably; the lives on the Mediterranean were affected by political struggles as well as economic and social opportunities provided by the resources of not only the landlocked Mare Nostrum, but also the ambiguously defined geographical space called the “Greater Mediterranean”. Therefore, it also becomes imperative to discuss the structural changes that the Mediterranean experienced. The effects of the rapid technological changes in the warfare, imperial rivalries that dominated the sea, inflationary pressures in the world economy, population pressure, and finally the slowly changing climate on the “collective destinies” of the people inhabiting the Mediterranean were explained briefly in order to give relevant historical context.
WORCK Conference 2 / ELHN Conference 4: Historicising the Concept of Europe in Global History, 30 August–3 September 2021: Vienna, Austria
Crete experienced a great demographic transformation in the second half of the 19th century due to political conflicts between Greece and Ottoman Empire, with cultural and socio-economic effects. The Muslim element that was dominant in urban areas and controlled the maritime and port professions was in continuous decrease in the last decades of the 19th century in the three large port-cities: Chania, Rethymnon and Heraklion. Moreover, constant rebellions that burst out in the island affected the relationship between Christian and Muslim communities. The paper aims to bring up the demographic changes caused by these political events and their impact on the maritime and port professions and activities. The focus will mainly lie on the port of Chania and on Muslim sailors, dockworkers and ship owners, who constituted the core of maritime workers. According to the sources, their departure created a vacuum in the port, as well as in maritime labour and activities. The analysis is based on demographic material, newspapers and on the court registers (mixed court and commercial court registers), that examine court disputes between Muslims and Christians.