Emotions in the Ottoman Empire by Tekgül Nil;

Author:Tekgül, Nil;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Emotions as Practices

As I have discussed in the first chapter, within the philosophical framework of Ottoman society, emotions were conceptualized as practices, either as emotion-vices or emotion-virtues, relevant only in terms of relationships. In some case records, although there are not any terms of emotion expressed, one may trace emotions as bodily practices, realized in their social relations.

In a judicial court record of Aleppo dating from 1663,32 fifteen Muslim and eleven Christian subjects who were residents of the same neighborhood came to the court, reporting that they had previously collectively borrowed 520 guruş from Hamza Ağa to meet the neighborhood’s tax obligations, and he was now seeking repayment. Considering that one 17 guruş was equivalent to 120 akçe, and the cost of a loaf of bread was 1 akçe, 520 guruş was a significant amount of money, perhaps enough to buy a big pension, or more than the total collective tax obligations of a couple of villages. Over the course of the seventeenth century, taxes called avarızhane, which were normally only collected in extraordinary times of war, became regularized.33 One unit of this tax obligation was allocated to a number of households in the same neighborhood. This could cover three, five, seven or nine real households, depending on the taxpayers’ economic means. We do not know for sure how many real households formed a single tax unit, or avarızhane. In other words, the allocation of this accrued tax was determined by the communities themselves. In this case, both Muslim and Christian residents from the same neighborhood testified to the court that the current tax obligation of certain homeowners could not be collected. They collectively demanded that the judge give permission to collect from the financially able residents, in a single sum, the tax amount to cover both the debt to Hamza Ağa and the remaining tax arrears. This would allocate the burden of the tax liability to those in the neighborhood who could afford to pay, representing a case in which community members protected their fellows from the financial burden of tax payments, and emotions in this case are realized as practices.

Likewise, in another record,34 the kethüda and the notables of the stone-making (taşçı) guild in İstanbul, all of whom were non-Muslims, came to the court to make an unusual petition in the presence of Mahmud Çelebi, the administrator of a waqf (social fund) established to collect communal taxes to be used for the Bayezid Ağa neighborhood’s shared expenses. The Bayezid Ağa neighborhood was situated within the Topkapı gate of the city walls of Istanbul. From their court application, the Bayezid Ağa neighborhood apparently had nine registered units of taxation (avarızhane). However, members of the stone-making guild were voluntarily paying the taxes and other expenses corresponding to the obligations of one taxation unit of the Bayezid Ağa neighborhood with feelings of contentment (rızamız ile) for providing sustenance (imdad olmak üzere) to the quarter. They now came to court requesting to pay for not one but three units of taxation. It

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