Book | Mediterranean Encounters: Trade and Pluralism in Early Modern Galata

Mavi Boncuk |

Mediterranean Encounters: Trade and Pluralism in Early Modern Galata by Fariba Zarinebaf[1]

Hardcover: 424 pages
Publisher: University of California Press; First edition (July 24, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0520289927
ISBN-13: 978-0520289925

Mediterranean Encounters traces the layered history of Galata—a Mediterranean and Black Sea port—to the Ottoman conquest, and its transformation into a hub of European trade and diplomacy as well as a pluralist society of the early modern period. Framing the history of Ottoman-European encounters within the institution of ahdnames (commercial and diplomatic treaties), this thoughtful book offers a critical perspective on the existing scholarship. For too long, the Ottoman empire has been defined as an absolutist military power driven by religious conviction, culturally and politically apart from the rest of Europe, and devoid of a commercial policy. By taking a close look at Galata, Fariba Zarinebaf provides a different approach based on a history of commerce, coexistence, competition, and collaboration through the lens of Ottoman legal records, diplomatic correspondence, and petitions. She shows that this port was just as cosmopolitan and pluralist as any large European port and argues that the Ottoman world was not peripheral to European modernity but very much part of it.

See also: Crime and Punishment in Istanbul 1700-1800 by Fariba Zarinebaf | January 2011

The idea for writing Mediterranean Encounters was born when I lived as a graduate student in a Bohemian neighborhood in Pera in the 1990s. Pera was the museum of the Ottoman Empire’s European enclave and diplomatic hub. It was still possible to live, feel, and sense the traces of this once cosmopolitan port that had witnessed its own share of a glorious past during the Ottoman era well as war and occupation at the end of the empire through its layered urban tissue and architecture and the rich documentary evidence in the archives.

The book places Galata, the former Genoese colony and European port of Istanbul at the heart of global networks of trade between the Black Sea and Mediterranean ports as well as the caravan trade between Asia and Europe in the early modern period.  It also tackles the rich and growing historiography on Mediterranean ports and places the Ottoman Empire and its port of Galata within it.

Tracing the history of Galata to the late medieval period, I emphasize continuity and change after the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in 1453. I examine legal institutions of trade such as commercial and diplomatic treaties (ahdnames/capitulations) signed between Ottoman rulers, the Italian city-states and European allies and their role in the promotion of international trade and dispute resolution. I argue that the earlier treaties were bilateral and that the Ottoman state practiced a combination of free trade and protectionist polices in promoting both local and international traders.

As a result of these treaties and Ottoman policies in reviving the economy, Galata/Pera emerged as an important commercial as well as diplomatic hub, catering to international as well as domestic trade.

Based on a study of Islamic court records, petitions submitted to the imperial council and imperial orders as well as travelogues, I study the ebb and flow of trade, its impact on the everyday life of the inhabitants of Galata and Ottoman, European encounters in the public spaces of the marketplace, the courts as well as taverns and coffeehouses. I focus on trade between Galata and Marseille and the role of French traders in international as well as domestic trade and as informal bankers. I show that wars, global competition for trade routes and raw materials, as well as unfavorable treaties could undermine economic life, leading to tensions, violence as well as state led policies against foreigners in Galata in the late eighteenth century. 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Note on Transliteration and Translation xvii
Introduction 1

PART ONE
THE URBAN SETTING
1  A Layered History: From a Genoese Colony to an Ottoman Port 23
2  The Rise of Pera: From Necropolis to Diplomatic and Commercial Hub 68

PART TWO
THE LEGAL AND DIPLOMATIC SETTING
3  Ottoman Ahdnames: Their Origins and Development in the Early Modern Period 91
4  War, Diplomacy, and Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 126

PART THREE
COMMERCIAL AND CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS
5  Feeding Istanbul: The Merchants of Galata and the Provisioning Trade 153
6  Between Galata and Marseille: From Silks and Spices to Colonial Sugar and Coffee 185
7  Sexual and Cultural Encounters in Public and Private Spaces 233

Epilogue: The Unraveling of the French Revolution in Pera 273
Appendix: Archival Documents in English Translation 291
Glossary 297
Notes 303

Bibliography 361


"An outstanding work in early modern Mediterranean history, Fariba Zarinebaf's Mediterranean Encounters explores commercial, legal, and cultural relations in Galata with depth and vigor. This fascinating analysis brings to life the rich history of Galata’s inhabitants—Muslims, Christians and Jews—and carefully examines their relationship to the empire in which they lived, as well as to the empires around them, their commerce, their trading relations, their leisure practices, and their everyday life. Offering a rich and sophisticated reading of sources in three languages, and incorporating research methodologies from microhistory, legal history, urban history, and gender studies, Mediterranean Encounters is a vivid and fascinating history of the city of Istanbul. A marvelous read."—Orit Bashkin, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, University of Chicago

"Galata: port of Istanbul, Ottoman-European diplomatic hub, storied home of Istanbul’s nightlife. And yet few comprehensive historical accounts exist. Zarinebaf’s work fills this void in masterly fashion. Her deeply researched book shows us the legal, commercial, and social characteristics of this essential cosmopolitan center in the crucial early modern period."—A. Holly Shissler, Associate Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish History, University of Chicago

"In Mediterranean Encounters, Fariba Zarinebaf charts the rise of early modern Istanbul as a commercial center, and its engagement with European imperial powers. Unedited court records vividly bring to life the bustling cacophony of the Ottoman city in all its grittiness and complexity."—Brian A. Catlos, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder

"Zarinebaf shows us Ottoman Galata as we have not seen it before, over time and in depth. Her detailed vision of the early modern port highlights its intercommunality. Especially illuminating are her nuanced treatments of the implementation of Ottoman-French treaties and of the interactions among locals and foreigners."—Palmira Brummett, Visiting Scholar in History, Brown University

"Fariba Zarinebaf takes her readers on a grand tour of Galata’s pluralist past and cosmopolitan character. Galata has long deserved a history of its own, and it could not have wished for a better chronicler than Zarinebaf."—Maurits van den Boogert, PhD, author of Aleppo Observed and The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System

[1] Dr. Fariba Zarinebaf Professor, Former Director of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Program at UC-Riverside, 2012-2016. Fariba Zarinebaf is Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of Crime and Punishment in Istanbul, 1700–1800 and coauthor with John Bennet and Jack L. Davis of A Historical and Economic Geography of Ottoman Greece: The Southwestern Morea in the 18th Century. 

Fariba Zarinebaf obtained her B.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her Ph.D. in Middle Eastern and Islamic history from the University of Chicago in Islamic history. Before coming to the UC Riverside, Fariba Zarinebaf taught at the University of Virginia, Northwestern University, Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey and at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She also taught at the University of Chicago.

New Book

My next book project, Galata Encounters, Cosmopolitanism in an Ottoman Port, 1750-1850, which is under contract to the University of California Press, will examine the port of Galata ( Istanbul) as a treaty port and a free trade zone in the early modern period. Setting it in the context of eastern Mediterranean cities, I will trace its layered history to the Byzantine and Genoese periods and will focus on the impact of Ottoman conquest on the former Genoese port. I will examine the transformation of Galata from a Genoese port into a port of trade with Western Europe ( France) and a center of diplomacy in the Levant. Galata was also emerging as an important port of transit trade between the Balkans, imperial Russia and the Mediterranean, thus making it a strategic port in the north- south axis. By the nineteenth century, it was one of the the most cosmopolitan ports in Europe and the Islamic world.

INTERESTS

I am interested in the social and urban history of the Ottoman Empire and Iran. Filling an important gap in Ottoman studies, my book, Crime and Punishment in Istanbul, 1700-1800, published by the University of California Press in 2010, examines the history of violence, criminality, policing and punishment in Istanbul from the eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Mapping urban violence and crime in Istanbul's multi-ethnic and diverse social landscape, this study links violence and crime to political, economic and social transformations in the Mediterranean's largest metropolis. My work seeks to normalize the history of Istanbul through the lens of Istanbul's police records, Islamic court documents, Ottoman narrative sources and European travelogues. I also argue that contrary to the existing trajectories of Ottoman modernization based on Western models alone, the Ottoman legal system based on the shari'a, custom, and kanun continued to exert influence on the penal code well into the twentieth century. The system of Ottoman justice allowed for constant negotiation between communal courts, the kadi court and the imperial council. Moreover, the role of state in punishing crime and policing expanded in the eighteenth century contrary to the proponents of Ottoman decentralization theory. The Ottoman state was not too different from its Western counterparts in controlling and disciplining its unruly population, sexual transgressions, and various categories of crime at times of social and political unrest.

My next project will focus on cosmoplitanism and modernity in Istanbul during the nineteenth century. I am also working on expanding my dissertation to study Azerbaijan between two empires (the Safavid and Ottoman) and examnine the history of a borderland region in the early modern period. I am also writing a Memoir of growing up in Pre-Revolutionary Iran.

My other interests include Islamic history and civilization; The Ottoman Empire and Iran; Gender in Middle Eastern history; Islamic Legal history; Urban and social history of  the Ottoman empire and Iran; Crime and policing in Istanbul; Ottoman Greece; Inter-communal relations in Istanbul; Azerbaijan and the Caucasus; History of women's charity and philanthropy in the Middle East; Modernity and Sexuality in the Middle East; Persian literature.