Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources by Suraiya Faroqhi

Author:Suraiya Faroqhi [SURAIYA FAROQHI]
Language: spa
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Middle East, History
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

E U R O P E A N S O U R C E S O N O T T O M A N H I S T O R Y

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did not mean that they saw these towns in quite the same fashion. Evliya proceeded in a fairly systematic way; it was apparently his aim to visit all Ottoman towns of any importance at least once. Both great cities and less important places were described by the application of one and the same mental questionnaire, in which public and private buildings played a central role. Commerce was important, largely because it gave rise to such monuments as khans and bedestan s; but religious and military-administrative buildings were given pride of place. By contrast, Tavernier was interested only in long-distance trade, and the conditions which furthered or prevented it.

When he described religious and other non-commercial public buildings, it was usually a sideline. Either Tavernier’s trade had obliged him to spend some time in the place in question, or the monuments he described were connected with his Armenian business partners. Certainly Evliya’s subtext, namely to exalt the glory of the Ottoman Empire through its cities, was totally lacking in Tavernier’s case, and one encounters few instances in which he expresses admiration for what he saw.

Yet Evliya’s relatively optimistic view of his own time does not mean that he simply retailed illusions, the ‘rose-red’ counterparts to the

‘black’ image of decline popular among his European contemporaries. This becomes obvious when comparing his description of the city of Urfa (Ruha) to that of Tavernier. Both travellers saw the town in the 1640s, within a few years of one another. Urfa had been hard hit by the Celali rebellions of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when the rebel leader Kalen-derog˘lu had occupied the town (Akdag˘, 1963, p. 211; Evliya Çelebi, 1314/1896–97, vol III, pp. 148–169; Tavernier, ed. Yeŕasimos, 1981, vol. I, pp. 244–246). Evliya acknowledges this fact by stating that Urfa’s commercial buildings were not very impressive, even though a large amount of goods was (once again?) available there. Tavernier reports that a large number of houses still lay in ruins, which is another facet of the same reality.

By stretching the point a little, we may conclude that both authors refer to the damage Urfa had suffered in the Celali uprisings, but that Evliya is interested in signs of recovery, while Tavernier remains non-committal on this issue.

E U R O P E A N A R C H I V A L S O U R C E S : D E A L I N G W I T H

N I N E T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y C I T I E S

Up to this point, our focus has been on narrative sources from the late sixteenth century to the eighteenth. However most of the European evidence on the Ottoman Empire is not narrative at all, but archival. It has been introduced briefly

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