Avârız and Nüzul Levies in the Ottoman Empire: A Case Study of the Province of Karaman 1620s-1700

Belleten ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 70 (258) ◽  
pp. 561-588
Author(s):  
Süleyman Demi̇rci̇

Basing on firsthand research on original, largely unused Ottoman archival registers (Anadolu ve Rumeli eyâletleri avârizhâne defterleri), this paper intends to examine in a systematic way avâriz and nüzul levies and their rates in the province of Karaman from 1620s to 1700. The focus of this paper will be the development of avâriz and nüzul levies as an alternative major source of regular taxation for the Ottoman government during the seventeenth century. It is a line of research that has so far attracted little attention from scholars despite the fact that there is now more debate on Ottoman socio-economic history generally.This examination will enables us to see for the first time how the avâriz and nüzul rates fluctuated during the seventeenth century down to the level of livas within the Province.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 295-341
Author(s):  
Deniz Beyazit

Abstract This article discusses The Met’s unpublished Dalāʾil al-khayrāt—2017.301—(MS New York, TMMA 2017.301), together with a group of comparable manuscripts. The earliest known dated manuscript within the corpus, it introduces several iconographic elements that are new to the Dalāʾil, and which compare with the traditions developing in the Mashriq and the Ottoman world in particular. The article discusses Dalāʾil production in seventeenth-century North Africa and its development in the Ottoman provinces, Tunisia, and/or Algeria. The manuscripts illustrate how an Ottoman visual apparatus—among which the theme of the holy sanctuaries at Mecca and Medina, appearing for the first time in MS New York, TMMA 2017.301—is established for Muhammadan devotion in Maghribī Dalāʾils. The manuscripts belong to the broader historic, social, and artistic contexts of Ottoman North Africa. Our analysis captures the complex dynamics of Ottomanization of the North African provinces of the Ottoman Empire, remaining strongly rooted in their local traditions, while engaging with Ottoman visual idioms.


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 153-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natividad Planas

Usually seen as actors with limited political agency, captives and slaves are, in this essay, at the core of complex diplomatic negotiations between two political authorities in a cross-confessional context. The case study presents a group of enslaved Christians in Algiers at the beginning of the seventeenth century working to restore a disrupted communication system between Spain and a rebel Muslim lord at war with the Ottomans. This lord, called Amar ben Amar bel Cadi, ruled the tiny city of Kuko and its region in the Djurdjura range (in present-day Kabylia). The goal of the Spanish military collaboration with him was to take Algiers and weaken the Ottoman Empire in North Africa. The paper argues that the captives’ initiative must be understood both as diplomacy “from below” and as a cross-confessional model of loyalty. Furthermore, it compels us to re-think the agency of actors in imperial encounters and to reject the topos—often implicit in contemporary historical essays—that religious affiliation conditioned political loyalty.


2008 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yigal Bronner ◽  
Gary A Tubb

AbstractThe last active period in the tradition of Sanskrit poetics, although associated with scholars who for the first time explicitly identified themselves as new, has generally been castigated in modern histories as repetitious and devoid of thoughtfulness. This paper presents a case study dealing with competing analyses of a single short poem by two of the major theorists of this period, Appayya Dīkṣita (sixteenth century) and Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja (seventeenth century). Their arguments on this one famous poem touch in new ways on the central questions of what the role of poetics had become within the Sanskrit world and the way in which it should operate in relation to other systems of knowledge and literary cultures.


Belleten ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 69 (256) ◽  
pp. 897-912
Author(s):  
Süleyman Demi̇rci̇

The avariz and nüzul levies were among the most important of the regular sources of government revenue in the Ottoman empire during the seventeenth century, but there has been relatively little study of them. Originating in the late fifteenth century as irregular imposts levied at times of military need, it is clear that by the first quarter of the seventeenth century avariz and nüzul had become virtually annual levies throughout the majority of the Rumelian and Anatolian provinces. This article examines the nature of these levies as seen through collection procedures in the province of Karaman in the period 1620 to 1700, showing how the Ottoman financial administration developed this relatively new and lucrative source of income in a consistent and fair manner.


2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 637-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL KERSHAW

AbstractThe difference in longitude between the observatories of Paris and Greenwich was long of fundamental importance to geodesy, navigation and timekeeping. Measured many times and by many different means since the seventeenth century, the preferred method of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made use of the electric telegraph. I describe here for the first time the four Paris–Greenwich telegraphic longitude determinations made between 1854 and 1902. Despite contemporary faith in the new technique, the first was soon found to be inaccurate; the second was a failure, ending in Anglo-French dispute over whose result was to be trusted; the third failed in exactly the same way; and when eventually the fourth was presented as a success, the evidence for that success was far from clear-cut. I use this as a case study in precision measurement, showing how mutual grounding between different measurement techniques, in the search for agreement between them, was an important force for change and improvement. I also show that better precision had more to do with the gradually improving methods of astronomical time determination than with the singular innovation of the telegraph, thus emphasizing the importance of what have been described as ‘observatory techniques’ to nineteenth-century practices of precision measurement.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Henry R. Shapiro

Abstract The seventeenth century was a turning-point in the cultural and demographic history of the Ottoman Empire. Beginning in the late sixteenth century, Ottoman-Armenian subjects began to flee en masse from the Celali Revolts, war with Persia, and famine in Eastern Anatolia to more secure territories in Western Anatolia, Istanbul, and Thrace. This article documents the arrival of Armenian refugees in Thrace using Ottoman Turkish court records from the coastal town of Rodosto (Tekirdağ). After describing the micro-history of an Armenian refugee crisis, this article suggests that these migrations played a catalyzing role in the rise of a distinct “Western Armenian” culture and society, which developed for the first time in the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire. The rise of this new society was an event of great importance in Ottoman history, as the Armenians would become a critical part of Ottoman economic and cultural life in the empire’s coastal trade cities.


2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-474
Author(s):  
Süleyman Demirci

AbstractThis paper on complaints about avâriz assessment and payment relies on the şer'iyye sicils of Kayseri. It begins by reviewing the traditional Near Eastern concept of State Justice in conjunction with the archival evidence. By examining the court cases and the imperial orders in these sicils it is possible for us to assess how the Ottoman judicial system and central administration dealt with the complaints and alleged corruption regarding the avâriz levies in the province of Kayseri throughout the seventeenth century. It is also possible to see how common people fought with rising problems in the avâriz system, or how they sought justice, and to what degree they knew what was their legal right and what not by examining the sicils themselves. The result of this examination will help to revise a number of misconceptions regarding complaints in the Ottoman Empire- a study of complaints from the sicils may yield a certain insight into the nature of the relationship between the centre and periphery. Cet article sur les plaintes concernant le calcul et le paiement de l'impôt avâriz est fondé sur les şer'iyye sicils de Kayseri. Il débute par l'étude du concept traditionnel de l'État de Justice au Proche Orient en relation avec les données trouvées dans les archives. En examinant les procès et les ordres impériaux dans ces sicils , il nous sera possible d'établir comment, à la fois le système judiciaire et l'administration centrale de l'Empire ottoman, ont traité les plaintes et la supposée corruption concernant le prélèvement de l'impôt avâriz dans la province de Kayseri tout au long du XVIIème siècle. Il nous sera alors possible, en exploitant les documents contenus dans les sicils, de voir comment la population luttait contre les problèmes croissants dans le système avâriz, comment elle avait recours à la justice et dans quelle mesure elle connaissait ses droits légaux. Les résultats de cette analyse permettront de réviser un certain nombre d'idées fausses à propos des plaintes dans l'Empire ottoman; de même, l'étude de ces plaintes pourra éventuellement donner une certaine idée de la nature des liens entre le centre et la périphérie.


2012 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-134
Author(s):  
Lynn Lara Westwater

AbstractThe correspondence between the radical Venetian pro-female polemicist and nun Arcangela Tarabotti (1604–52) and the Copernican French astronomer Ismaël Boulliau (1605–94) — here published for the first time — shows how one of Tarabotti's most controversial works made it to press. She had long and unsuccessfully sought in Italy and in France to print the work, which was, puzzlingly, published two years after her death in Holland. It was subsequently placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. Charting the explosive work's journey to France and its later arrival and reception in Holland, the Tarabotti-Boulliau correspondence provides a case study in the circulation of unorthodox ideas in seventeenth-century Europe. By showing Tarabotti's firm inscription in the well-connected scientist's intellectual circle, the letter exchange furthermore contributes to our expanding notions of women's participation in the Republic of Letters, while also suggesting a confluence of radical scientific and social views.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-63
Author(s):  
Ruth Roded

Beginning in the early 1970s, Jewish and Muslim feminists, tackled “oral law”—Mishna and Talmud, in Judaism, and the parallel Hadith and Fiqh in Islam, and several analogous methodologies were devised. A parallel case study of maintenance and rebellion of wives —mezonoteha, moredet al ba?ala; nafaqa al-mar?a and nush?z—in classical Jewish and Islamic oral law demonstrates similarities in content and discourse. Differences between the two, however, were found in the application of oral law to daily life, as reflected in “responsa”—piskei halacha and fatwas. In modern times, as the state became more involved in regulating maintenance and disobedience, and Jewish law was backed for the first time in history by a state, state policy and implementation were influenced by the political system and socioeconomic circumstances of the country. Despite their similar origin in oral law, maintenance and rebellion have divergent relevance to modern Jews and Muslims.


Author(s):  
Mauricio Drelichman ◽  
Hans-Joachim Voth

This epilogue argues that Castile was solvent throughout Philip II's reign. A complex web of contractual obligations designed to ensure repayment governed the relationship between the king and his bankers. The same contracts allowed great flexibility for both the Crown and bankers when liquidity was tight. The risk of potential defaults was not a surprise; their likelihood was priced into the loan contracts. As a consequence, virtually every banking family turned a profit over the long term, while the king benefited from their services to run the largest empire that had yet existed. The epilogue then looks at the economic history version of Spain's Black Legend. The economic history version of the Black Legend emerged from a combination of two narratives: a rich historical tradition analyzing the decline of Spain as an economic and military power from the seventeenth century onward, combined with new institutional analysis highlighting the unconstrained power of the monarch.


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