Ottoman Governance in Seventeenth-Century Damascus By Malissa Anne Taylor A dissertatio

269 Pages·2011·2.23 MB·English

by  Malissa Taylor

UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Fragrant Gardens and Converging Waters: Ottoman Governance in Seventeenth-Century
Damascus
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4f14r9vf
Author
Taylor, Malissa Anne
Publication Date
2011

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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Fragrant Gardens and Converging Waters:
Ottoman Governance in Seventeenth-Century Damascus

By
Malissa Anne Taylor

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
History
in the
Graduate Division
of the
University of California, Berkeley

Committee in charge:

Professor Beshara Doumani, Chair
Professor Leslie Peirce
Professor Carla Hesse
Professor Saba Mahmood
Copyright Malissa Anne Taylor
Abstract

Fragrant Gardens and Converging Waters: Ottoman Governance in Seventeenth-
Century Damascus

By

Malissa Anne Taylor

Doctor of Philosophy in History

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Beshara Doumani, Chair

This dissertation investigates the governance of seventeenth-century Damascus
by examining claims upon the productive capacity of land, and the collection and
redistribution of agricultural taxes. The early modern Ottoman Empire—of which
Damascus was a province—was a large agrarian empire wherein the interests of
numerous groups and individuals converged around the land and its produce. In
light of its centrality to both the subjects and the state, the management of land
as a resource has much to tell us about what governance was expected to be in
this period, at a time before religious, economic, political or social authority had
been disembedded from one another. In this, Damascus is not much different
from any other provincial town lying within the early modern empires of Asia and
Europe; the issues raised here are not pertinent to the history of the Middle East
alone but are relevant to other early modern states.
The inquiry into what the state governs and how it does so starts with the
observation that Ottoman political literature conceives of a unified political body
wherein different groups of people play different roles in allowing the state to
function. Through the lens of tax assessment and collection, the first chapter
examines the role within the Ottoman state body that is played by the peasant
cultivators in the villages surrounding Damascus. The first half of the chapter
explores how the prerogatives comparable to other fiscal military states shaped
Ottoman taxation policy in the seventeenth century. The importance of obtaining
cash led not only to the imposition of new taxes and updated tax registers at the
Istanbul finance bureau, but to a new responsibility of the villagers for tax
collection. The chapter argues that where compliance with taxation was
concerned, the most important governing authority in the village was the villagers
themselves. Examining the interactions between villagers, judges, muftis and tax
farmers, the chapter examines how individuals and groups that are not state
agents strictly speaking, become authorized to exercise state power. The
chapter concludes that peasant cultivators do not merely maintain a relationship
1
with the Ottoman government, rather, in some sense they are the government
and form an integral part of its machinery.
The question of how the governing authority of the state intersects with the
authority of Islamic law has long been a question in the historiography of the
Ottoman Empire and Islamic societies in general. However, the question of shifts
in the configuration of religious and temporal authority in the seventeenth century
is not an issue whose importance is confined to the history of the Islamic regions
of the world. Rather, the question of expanding state power and the proper role
of ʻreligionʼ in the body politic is a widespread concern of the early modern
period. With this question in mind, the second and third chapters explore the
changing legal powers of the sultan and his agents to control productive land and
peasant labor. Chapter two notes a change in the meaning and scope of sultanʼs
authority to legislate peasant access to the land in the seventeenth century. This
expansion in the sultanʼs legislative role is absorbed into the jurisprudence of the
empireʼs jurist-scholars, and creating a specifically ʻOttomanʼ practice of Islamic
scholarship. Starting in the sixteenth century, the sultanʼs enacted laws—known
as ʻqanunʼ—regulate with far greater detail the rights and obligations of peasants
and soldier-tax collectors. What emerges is a right of usufruct for the peasantry
that is controlled by the dynastyʼs statutes rather than the interests of local
military administrators or local custom. The fact that this concept of the usufruct
right eventually comes to prevail in Damascene villages suggests that usufruct
was an increasingly standardized right across the empireʼs rural communities.
This is despite the fact that the Damascenes had their own local and juridical
traditions that ran counter to the concept of usufruct being promulgated by the
sultan. What we find in juristic discussion of usufruct is a very slowly changing
idea of the boundaries of imperial authority and its legal consequences.
While the second chapter demonstrates a growing consensus that the
sultan had wider authority to legislate in matters pertaining to the lands of the
state treasury, the legality of some land tenure practices sanctioned by the sultan
remained controversial. The third chapter examines the limits of state power to
pursue its need to fill the coffers, and how it was expected to treat the village
taxpayers. There was no debate among Ottoman subjects that a solvent treasury
was a necessity. Without exception, we find that keeping fertile land productive
and distributing the revenues in appropriate ways are shared priorities. The
common reference point defining the limits of the sultanʼs authority over
production and taxation was the shariʼah, yet there was great disagreement on
what the shariʼah enjoined, and in some sense, what the shariʼah was. When it
came to what means of extraction the shariʼah permitted or the extent to which
the state could coerce the villagers to produce, disagreement was rampant. It
was not always the ulema (religious scholars) that opposed state actions on the
grounds that such actions violated the shariʼah—as this chapter shows, the views
of the ulema were sometimes more cooperative with the dynastyʼs decisions than
those held by its temporal administrators. Both chapters address the question of
the shifting configuration of state and religious authority in the early modern
2
world, and examine its consequences on the lives and livelihoods of Damascene
cultivators.
The fourth and fifth chapters investigate two groups in Damascus who
were frequent beneficiaries of the revenues produced in the villages, the ulema
and the soldiers based in the city. The right of these groups to receive the tax
moneys of the peasant cultivators was premised on the services that each
provided for the political body as a whole. There did not appear to be much
dispute about the nature of the services that each was to perform, but differences
did spring up when the question arose of how or whether such services had been
performed in specific instances. The chapter maintains that it is these conflicting
interpretations of service, status, privilege and vocational responsibility that most
clearly reveal how the provincial elites did or did not take part in the exercise of
Ottoman authority in Damascus. The ulema earned their access to the revenue
sources through their scholarship and teaching and the general duty of providing
moral guidance to other Muslims. Part of this duty was to denounce oppression,
and to protect the strong from abusing the weak. An argument arose among the
ulema of how much honor or revenue one could seek from the state without
compromising oneself in the process. Could one covet the sultanʼs largess and
still be adequately critical if he or his agents overstepped their authority? Other
ulema found that the dignity of their profession was an asset when their
management of cultivators and taxes was called into question. They deflected
the accusations of greed and fraud by invoking their dedication to pious works
and scholarship. In all cases, the self conception of the ulema as a group with a
particular function in the political body was critical to the way they responded to
opportunities for gaining wealth and power.
For the soldiers stationed in Damascus as well as the great military
families of the countryside, access to rural revenues was contingent upon
obedient military service. Increasingly, the entirety of the fiscal and military
resources of the province of Damascus was oriented towards financing the
pilgrimage to Mecca. The need for effective, reliable and obedient military
leadership of the pilgrimage began to assume a higher priority for the Ottoman
government. From 1660 to 1690, the Damascene janissaries dominated the
office of pilgrimage leader, as they had a number of qualities to recommend them
for the position: not only did know the routes from accompanying the caravan, but
their capacity to create trouble as well as their expectation of reward was modest
in comparison with the great military families of the countryside. Through
investigation of their economic activities, it is clear that the question of which
soldiers were considered ʻlocalʼ to Damascus had more to do with their
involvement in the cityʼs commerce rather than their origins or ethnicity. In turn,
when the dynasty finally moved to destroy their leadership and punish them for
insubordination, the question of how their ʻlocalʼ sympathies had affronted
imperial prerogatives played out differently than might be imagined. While the
issue of what constituted obedience might be read differently in Damascus than
3
in Istanbul, it was clear that the Damascenes shared the belief that military men,
even local military men, must be obedient to the sultan.
This dissertation argues that Damascenes from all backgrounds play an
important role in Ottoman governance of the province, and one that is
comparable to that of other early modern subjects. It shows people trying to
locate their place within the political body as a whole, while the limits of their
duties and powers associated with different groups underwent great flux and
were vigorously debated. It is this uneasy integration of these various groups
into the body of state which best demonstrates the relations between the subjects
and the state in the early modern Middle East.

4
To my husband, Andrew
and
my sister, Becky

i
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements..................................................................................iii

Note on Transliteration............................................................................v

List of Abbreviations.................................................................................vi

Introduction.............................................................................................vii

Historiography.......................................................................................1

Chapter One..........................................................................................39

Chapter Two..........................................................................................70

Chapter Three.......................................................................................108

Chapter Four.........................................................................................151

Chapter Five.........................................................................................190

Conclusion...........................................................................................217

Bibliography.........................................................................................225

ii
Acknowledgements

This dissertation was written with the support and assistance of a number of
individuals, whose contributions I acknowledge with sincere gratitude. I thank my
advisor, Beshara Doumani, for his patience with me, his commitment to my
project, and his thoughtful commentary throughout the process. I would also like
to thank the other members of my committee, all of whom provided me with their
insights and letters of support at necessary moments. I thank Leslie Peirce for
her consistently thorough and prompt responses to my work and I thank Saba
Mahmood and Carla Hesse for sharing their comments and perspectives with
me.
The research for this dissertation was made possible by a number of
generous fellowships and grants. The history department at the University of
California Berkeley provided me not only with a semester of research funding, but
also gave me a year-long fellowship for writing. Funding for the writing phase
was also provided by a Sultan Grant from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies
at the University of California. Most of my research in Turkey was conducted
with funding from the Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad
fellowship. I would particularly like to thank the director of the Fulbright
Commission in Istanbul, Süreyya Ersoy, for his assistance in settling all
administrative obstacles which arose. The Council of American Overseas
Research Centers also supported my research in Turkey and allowed me time to
research in Syria with a multi-country study grant. I thank the Council, and in
particular its affiliate the American Research Institute in Turkey, for their support.
For two years, I was continually assisted by the wonderful staff at ARITʼs Istanbul
location, Tony Greenwood, Gulden Güneri and Semrin Korkmaz. I thank them
from the bottom of my heart.
I am also grateful to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Turkey, and
Department of Culture and Antiquities in Syria, for giving me permission to
research in their respective countries. I would also like to express my
appreciation for the friendly and helpful staff of the Başbanlık Arşivleri in Istanbul
and Dar al-Wathaiq and the Assad National Library in Syria, whose expertise and
courtesy was so helpful to my endeavors. A special thank you is in order to the
staff of the Süleymaniye Library in Turkey, who simply adopted me as one of
their own. I am also grateful for all those who provided assistance to me at the
Islam Araştırmaları Merkezi, Istanbul University Library, and the Institut Français
du Proche Orient.
A number of colleagues and mentors offered advice and support at
various stages of the research and writing. Whether in Istanbul or the United
States, I have relied upon Fariba Zarinebaf, Linda Darling, Victoria Holbrook and
Ariel Salzmann for both scholastic and moral support. Other friends and
colleagues unfortunately too numerous to mention posed thought provoking
iii