The Ottoman World

Christine Woodhead

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136498947
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The Ottoman empire as a political entity comprised most of the present Middle East (with the principal exception of Iran), north Africa and south-eastern Europe. For over 500 years, until its disintegration during World War I, it encompassed a diverse range of ethnic, religious and linguistic communities with varying political and cultural backgrounds.

Yet, was there such a thing as an 'Ottoman world' beyond the principle of sultanic rule from Istanbul? Ottoman authority might have been established largely by military conquest, but how was it maintained for so long, over such distances and so many disparate societies? How did provincial regions relate to the imperial centre and what role was played in this by local elites? What did it mean in practice, for ordinary people, to be part of an 'Ottoman world'?

Arranged in five thematic sections, with contributions from thirty specialist historians, The Ottoman World addresses these questions, examining aspects of the social and socio-ideological composition of this major pre-modern empire, and offers a combination of broad synthesis and detailed investigation that is both informative and intended to raise points for future debate. The Ottoman World provides a unique coverage of the Ottoman empire, widening its scope beyond Istanbul to the edges of the empire, and offers key coverage for students and scholars alike.

Part I

Foundations

Chapter One

Nomads and Tribes in the Ottoman Empire

Reşat Kasaba

Origins

The territories of the Ottoman empire intersected with what geographers refer to as the ‘sub-Arctic nomadic zone’, which extended from the Mediterranean littoral, through the Anatolian peninsula and the Iranian plateau, on to the mountains of Central Asia. For millennia, tens of thousands of tribes moved constantly across this belt of high mountains and dry steppes and deserts. Starting in the eleventh century, Turkic and Mongolian tribes arrived in Anatolia and eastern Mediterranean lands. They became integrated into the indigenous patterns of circulation and altered forever the social and political make-up and the history of these regions. As they passed through these lands, these tribes interacted with local communities; some melded into local relations and networks and abandoned their journey, while others continued to move. Superimposition of the long-distance migrations onto local structures and movements created a highly fluid social environment throughout this territory. Especially in Anatolia, between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries it became difficult to distinguish between the arriving, staying, or departing tribes, let alone between sedentary and nomadic communities. This was the context within which the Ottoman empire grew to become a world empire after the thirteenth century.

The integration of the goat- and sheep-herding Türkmen communities of the Anatolian peninsula and the camel-raising Bedouin and Arab tribes of North Africa and the Middle East created a fluid and heterogeneous society that defied simple characterization in ethnic, religious or administrative terms. At least initially, the Ottomans had neither the means nor the intention to settle permanently or discipline nomadic tribes. Instead, classifying tribes in their existing state appeared to be a more pragmatic approach. As their empire grew quickly in western Anatolia and the Balkans, the Ottomans continued to balance their interest in strengthening the empire’s administrative structure and its peasant base with the obvious need to define a clear place for nomads within Ottoman rural society. To this end, they developed special laws to monitor the activities of tribes and recorded tribal affairs separately in special documents.¹ Maintaining control over nomadic tribal communities was by no means an easy task. For one thing, the area across which the tribes moved could be quite large. One clan could spend summers at the source of the Euphrates in the interior of eastern Anatolia and then move south to the Syrian desert for the winter, a distance of over 600 miles.² Some of the tribes were huge, with as many as 30,000 to 40,000 individuals and sometimes several hundred thousand sheep and camels.³ Given that Ottoman law recognized 300 sheep as constituting a herd, and that the state used this as the unit of accounting in assessing the liabilities of tribes, these were indeed wealthy and formidable units.

The Ottomans not only kept the existing patterns of tribal migration intact, but they also encouraged mobility, making this an even larger part of the make-up of Ottoman society. For example, sedentary and nomadic communities were forced by the state to move across long distances, either as a method of punishment or as a way of settling newly conquered areas. It should be noted, however, that forceful relocation of nomadic tribes for punitive or strategic reasons did not automatically entitle them to land, since they were not necessarily encouraged or expected to adopt sedentary farming in their new places.⁴ Instead, in line with established practices in their places of origin, these communities were allocated grazing lands, since it was assumed that they would continue their pastoral nomadism in the new regions.

Administration

In administrative parlance, Ottoman officials referred to tribes as aşiret. In order to facilitate governance and taxation, they grouped the tribes in eastern Anatolia, Iraq, Syria, and further east in the Arab provinces as Türkmen, Kurds, Arabs or Bedouin. Those who had moved west of the Kızılırmak River in Anatolia and into the Balkans, and had increasingly engaged in settled agriculture and become semi-nomads (yarıgöçebe or konar-göçer), were referred to as yürüks.⁵ Of the main groupings, those in the east were closer to being absolute nomads than their counterparts in the west.

The largest administrative units the Ottomans recognized among the Kurds and Türkmens were il and ulus.⁶ The two largest of these were the Boz Ulus, consisting largely but not exclusively of Türkmens, and Kara Ulus, consisting largely, but not exclusively, of Kurds.⁷ Ulus confederations were divided into smaller groups, in descending order, as boy (sometimes taife), cemaat and kabile. Yürüks, on the other hand, were spun off from Türkmen kabiles and were not organized in the larger units of boy, il or ulus. Instead, they were classified and registered as kabiles and cemaats, mostly on the basis of their tax and other obligations or of the places where they circulated.⁸ For the most part, who was included in the yürük and Türkmen formations ulus, il, boy, cemaat or kabile was determined endogenously, with little influence from outside. These groups were given names and were recognized by the Ottoman administration only after they had already taken shape through their own internal dynamics. The tribal units which the Ottomans recognized for the purposes of administering could be very large yet territorially loose. In the sixteenth century, there were more than 100 separate tribes in various sizes registered as part of the Boz Ulus confederacy, whose population then is estimated to have been more than 60,000 tents with 2 million sheep. Their seasonal migrations covered an area extending from Mardin in south-eastern Anatolia all the way to Iran and Georgia.⁹

In addition to recognizing the existing groupings and regrouping them under new labels, the Ottoman government appointed high-ranking officers to administer the affairs of tribal communities and to assess and collect their taxes. Being at least partially mobile, tribes were not subject to the authority of the sancak beyi (district governor). Typically, ulus units were governed by voyvodas, and cemaats by kethüdas, whereas tribes who were registered into the army were supervised by seraskers. Like other administrative units in the empire, each confederation of tribes was also assigned a kadı (judge), who served as the direct representative of the central government and also adjudicated in intra- and intertribal matters. As a further indication of the government’s willingness to accommodate these communities, these kadıs would sometimes accompany the tribes as the latter went through their seasonal cycles of migration.¹⁰ Even though the titles of the officials who were in charge of tribes and those who were responsible for peasant households and villages were identical, there were important variations in the way in which the two sets of administrators were appointed. Perhaps more importantly, while the central organization of the Ottoman administration and its application in sedentary rural areas were highly centralized and hierarchical, there was a strong element of bottom-up initiative and indigenous identification which shaped the nature of Ottoman administration in tribal areas.

Of the indigenous tribes which the Ottomans came to dominate, the Kurdish communities constitute a special category. They were one of the largest ethnically distinct and predominantly Muslim communities whose presence in this part of the world long predated the Ottoman empire. The Ottomans were aware of the local power of this community and their policies contributed to the long-term survival of the Kurds as a distinct people. They used a policy of accommodation sometimes referred to as istimalet, which consisted of making generous concessions to win over the Kurds, while helping consolidate the power of local chiefs.¹¹ This was the same policy that was used towards Christian communities in western Anatolia and the Balkans in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.¹²

In general, Ottomans favoured Sunni Kurds over their Alevi counterparts. Most of the favours and preferential treatment were directed at them. Sunni Kurds were also encouraged to form a buffer against Iran and as an ally in lengthy struggles with the local Shi‘i communities (Kurdish and otherwise), some of whom supported the Iranian rulers. Some Kurdish chiefs took advantage of these conditions and used their ties with the Ottoman government to amass fortunes and extensive power in eastern Anatolia. So powerful did some of these chieftains become that they were able to influence Ottoman policies and affect the shape of military campaigns in their areas.¹³

Murad IV (1623–40) issued a series of imperial orders in 1632 and 1633 recognizing the power of the Kurdish chiefs, reinforcing the hereditary nature of Kurdish tribal chiefdom, and prohibiting local military commanders and governors from harassing the Kurdish tribes.

Generally, nomadic tribes were exempted from many of the taxes and dues that were levied on most peasant households. Even with the special taxes that were imposed on them, the tax burden on nomads ended up being lighter than the obligations of sedentary farmers. The most commonly imposed tax on all pastoral nomads was adet-i agnam (sheep tax), which was determined on the basis of the size and quality of the herds owned by a particular tribe or confederation of tribes. Nomads were also required to pay a series of fees for their grazing lands and pastures, as well as special dues if they harmed or lost their own or other people’s animals or slaves. Along with the rest of the peasants, nomads also had to pay marriage tax (resm-i arus or gerdek akçesi). As was the general practice, most of these taxes were assessed and the obligation of nomads was determined by taking into consideration whether the payer was well off and also whether he was single, married, living with his parents or living alone.¹⁴ Naturally, nomads were aware of their special status, and they used it in raising complaints against officials who sought to impose additional dues on them. In such complaints they insisted that they were not tax-paying subjects (reaya) but had special status because of the specific services they were performing for the sultan.¹⁵ Here, the special status and power of the tribal leaders became particularly important, since they played an important role in negotiating with the government and affecting the outcome of such complaints.

Nomads in Ottoman...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Note on Turkish and technicalities
• Introduction
• Part I: Foundations
• Part II: Ottomans and Others
• Part III: the Wider Empire
• Part IV: Ordinary People
• Part V: Later Ottomans
• Glossary
• References
• Index