Suchergebnisse

Economic history is an underdeveloped discipline in Middle Eastern historiography. Within our field, economic history articles are not published often, and books on economic history are rare. It is true that certain topics have been better explored than others, as Maya Shatzmiller's contribution to this roundtable on medieval economic history shows. Previous scholarship on Ottoman economic history has focused on land tenure, fiscal practices and institutions, artisanal production and organization (almost exclusively in urban areas), economic and charitable functions ofawqāf, and, especially for the 19th century, questions relevant to Ottoman incorporation into the capitalist world system. There also exist studies on urban and rural markets, regional and long-distance trade networks, and economic activities of specific individuals (primarily government officials and provincial notables), although these tend to be descriptive. But there are very limited numbers of studies on standards of living; levels, accumulation, and distribution of wealth; productivity in agricultural production and manufacture; demography (especially for the 17th and 18th centuries); credit relations and financial institutions; and economic development. As in the literature on medieval Islamic contexts, sophisticated quantitative research is particularly rare, which makes empirically based comparisons among different parts of the region and with other parts of the world very difficult.

The purpose of this roundtable is to discuss the major methodological and theoretical challenges involved in economic research in the context of Middle Eastern/Islamic history. We asked scholars representing a diverse spectrum of training and specialization to reflect on the state of the field (or the sub-fields with which they are familiar) and to comment on its (their) strengths and shortcomings. The participants had the opportunity to read all papers and modify their own contributions accordingly. The result, we believe, is a focused and critical conversation that reflects the plurality of opinions and approaches in the field. Outside of conference panels and small-scale workshops, exclusively methodological and theoretical exchanges in Middle Eastern/Islamic economic history are rare. We hope that this forum will stimulate further conversation and research on the issues discussed here.

In this paper I will construct separate time series for the wage levels of agricultural and unskilled (and non-factory) urban workers in nineteenth-century Ottoman Anatolia. An earlier study (Boratav et al. 1985) was able to construct an annual time series for urban wage levels by utilising a weighted average of the wages of skilled and unskilled laborers in towns and cities. Production of a time series for agricultural wages, on the other hand, is important for seeing the wage variations in rural and urban areas in the nineteenth-century Anatolian context and is crucial for understanding the peculiarities of the Ottoman (and later Turkish) economic development. These variations, at least to a degree, were responsible for the differences in labor costs in various parts of the empire and thus determined the peculiarities of the Ottoman incorporation into, world-economy (Ergene 1995).

AbstractUsing a distant reading methodology, the article examines the thematic compositions offetvacompilations by four Ottomanşeyhülislams in the early modern era. Our analysis of thefetvas from the late 17th and early 18th centuries reveal that the majority of these opinions concerned a small number of issues, including women, family problems, contractual matters, and disputes and litigations. The article also demonstrates that the representation offetvas with such concerns increased compared to what we find in the opinions of Ebussuud Efendi, a 16th-centuryşeyhülislam. But interest in religious issues, non-Muslims, and taxation declined over time. Finally, the article proposes computational procedures to identify the complex contextual characteristics of theşeyhülislams' opinions.

This article investigates the relationship between inheritance and wealth in the context of eighteenth-century Ottoman Kastamonu. Based on the estate inventories of the deceased (sing. tereke ) as recorded in Kastamonu court records (sicils ), the article introduces a variety of quantitative techniques to measure the impact of Islamic inheritance practices on wealth accumulation across subsequent generations and to understand how it influenced wealth mobility among various socioeconomic groups. The estimations provided in this article suggest that while the inheritance practice in Kastamonu caused wealth fragmentation, the process also contributed to the durability of economic divisions within the provincial Ottoman society.

This article measures wealth levels and inequalities among the Muslim population of 18th-century Ottoman Kastamonu by utilizing information found in estate inventories (terekes). Also developed is a quantitative methodology that can predict the economic worth of specific noneconomic markers of social, religious, and gender identity, including honorific titles, religious epithets, and occupational markers. Our calculations indicate that inequality among different segments of the Muslim community was pronounced. Men from higher echelons of the military and religious establishments, as well as individuals who carried the epithet "pilgrim" (elhac), were significantly wealthier than the rest of the society. At the same time, economic disparities cut across career lines and title/epithet-based distinctions among legators. Finally, the regression analysis introduced in this article reveals that wealth transfers across generations may have contributed greatly to overall wealth levels.

WOS:000253035900008 ; This paper introduces methods to estimate wealth levels and disparities among Muslim inhabitants of 18th-century Ottoman Kastamonu. Our sources in this pursuit are estate inventories of the deceased (sing. tereke) as recorded in Kastamonu court records (sicils), mainly in the first half of the 18th century (1712–60). By analyzing information provided by these sources through a variety of quantitative techniques, we measure levels of inequality among Muslims of Kastamonu and describe the relationship between economic privilege and social, political, religious, and occupational status as well as gender identity. Our work outlines the contours of economic stratification in 18thcentury Kastamonu and reveals the relative positions of various social groups within this hierarchy

Since the emergence of the Weberian notion of "kadijustiz" scholars have debated the ability of Islamic courts to resolve disputes fairly and predictably. For a quantitative analysis of how these courts resolved disputes, we use data from the court records (sicils) of the Ottoman town of Kastamonu and examine whether the judges' decision followed systematic patterns and whether the patterns were logical. The results show that the trial outcome was influenced by the gender, elite status, religion, and religious markers of litigants. Using the tools and concepts of modern scholarship on dispute resolution, we argue that in resolving disputes Kastamonu courts displayed logical patterns that are consistent with those identified by quantitative analysis of court outcomes in modern societies.

Court records are used extensively in historical research. Preserved as summaries of daily legal proceedings, they give historians a unique opportunity to access information about the names, characteristics, and socio‐economic status of individuals and the laws, local customs, and legal institutions of societies. Although researchers have noted various limitations of these records, the problem of selection bias has not been systematically studied. Since litigants would probably settle disputes in which one side is likely to be a clear winner, the cases that go to trial are more likely to be the difficult and uncertain ones that comprise a non‐random subset of all disputes. This article presents a study of selection bias in Ottoman courts in the town of Kastamonu in northern Anatolia, from the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Disputes are categorized by type and the distribution of court participants is studied according to composition, gender, and socio‐religious status. A regression analysis is run to determine the factors affecting the likelihood of cases being tried in court. The results indicate that the cases that ended up in court were selected systematically. If the selection bias is ignored, research based on Ottoman court records may be seriously flawed in its ability to yield general conclusions.