The Household of Hasan Aga Bilifya: an Assessment of Elite Politics in Seventeenth-Century Egypt*

Jane HATHAWAY 135 Ohio State University THE HOUSEHOLD OF HASAN AGA BILIFYA: AN ASSESSMENT OF ELITE POLITICS IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY EGYPT* The seventeenth century, it is generally acknowledged, was a period of decentralization in the Ottoman Empire, when local elites in the empire’s provinces began to dilute the authority of the imperial center1. The identity of these elites was still in flux, however. Local vested interests had not yet displaced Ottoman officialdom as sources of authority; meanwhile, Ottoman officials themselves were becoming localized and cultivating their own interests and connections on the spot. It is within this context that we may evaluate the political culture of the empire’s largest province, Egypt, during this period of transformation. Sultan Selim I (1501-1520) had conquered Egypt, along with Syria, the Hijaz, and southeastern Anatolia, from the Mamluk sultanate in 1517. The administration that the Ottomans imposed on Egypt retained a number of features of the defunct Mamluk regime and even accommo- dated defeated Mamluk emirs who swore fealty to the Ottoman sultan. At the same time, however, the Ottomans altered the Mamluk land regime and the military elite that it supported. They made no attempt to * An earlier version of this article was presented at Columbia University’s Seminar for Studies in the History and Culture of the Turks in January 1993. I am grateful to the seminar participants for their comments. 1 See, for example, Halil Inalcık, “Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire”, Archivum Ottomanicum VI (1980), pp. 283-337; idem, “Centralization and Decentralization in Ottoman Administration”, in Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History, ed. Thomas Naff and Roger Owen, Carbondale, Ill., 1977. 136 JANE HATHAWAY preserve the system of cavalry-supporting assignments of usufruct, or iqtacs, that had prevailed under the late Mamluk sultanate and that itself resembled the timar system in force in the Ottoman central lands. Instead, they introduced a contingent of imperially-appointed tax collec- tors known as emins, who delivered land taxes directly to the governor’s treasury. In the course of the seventeenth century, the system of emins gave way to tax farms, or iltizams, which were sold at auction to the highest bidders2. In this way, the revenues of all administrative units, from villages to entire subprovinces, came to be farmed by salaried officials. Many of the holders of these tax farms belonged to Egypt’s Ottoman- era military elite, which consisted of seven regiments of soldiery3 and the class of grandees known as beys, or sancaks, who held the governorships of Egypt’s subprovinces and such offices as pilgrimage commander (emir ül-hac) and treasurer (defterdar). These beys were in a number of respects comparable to the emirs of the Mamluk sultanate and to the sancak beyis of the Ottoman central lands4. Tax farming, however, blurred the promotional line between soldiery and beys that prevailed under the Mamluk iqtac system and the Ottoman timar system. With the introduction of iltizam, the beys joined the soldiery as salaried func- tionaries. Tax farms quickly became a source of tension between the beys and the officers of the seven regiments. As the imperial treasury’s ability to disburse salaries punctually diminished after the sixteenth century, officers began to invest in tax farms. Initially, officers tended to farm urban sources of revenue, such as the customs, while beys held rural tax farms, including those of the subprovincial governorships. By the late seven- 2 On land tenure in the Mamluk sultanate, see Hasanayn Rabie, The Financial System of Egypt, A.H. 564-741/A.D. 1169-1341, London, 1972, chapter 2; idem, “The Size and Value of the Iqtac in Egypt, 564-741 A.H./1169-1341 A.D.”, in Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East, ed. M.A. Cook, Oxford, 1970, pp. 129-138; A.N. Poliak, “Some Notes on the Feudal System of the Mamluks”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Soci- ety 1937, pp. 97-107. On the Ottoman timar, see Halil Inalcık, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300-1600, trans. Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber, London, 1973, pp. 104-118. On developments in Ottoman Egypt, see Stanford Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517-1798, Princeton, 1962, pp. 28ff., 65ff. 3 These were the Müteferrika, Çavu≥an, Janissaries (Mustahfizan), cAzeban, Gönül- lüyan, Tüfenkçiyan, and Çerakise. 4 In Egypt, sancak referred not to an assignment of revenue but to the bey himself, who held the tax farm of a subprovince or of other specified revenues. THE HOUSEHOLD OF HASAN AGA 137 teenth century, however, officers had entered the ranks of rural tax farm- ers; they were encouraged in this venture by the Ottoman government’s introduction of the heritable life-tenure tax farm, known as malikane, at the end of the century5. In this arena, notwithstanding, the officers were at a permanent disadvantage to the beys, for only those with the rank of bey could hold the most lucrative rural tax farms, namely, the subprovincial governorships. Understandably, the history of Egypt in the seventeenth century is characterized by a jockeying for position between beys and officers. Compounding this rivalry was a seemingly endless conflict between two entrenched factions, which we shall meet shortly. Contenders for power did their best to exploit their connections at the imperial court while at the same time building up their local power bases, often by withholding revenues from the imperial treasury. The imperial government periodi- cally attempted to curb the abuses of these local elites. In perhaps the most notable and effective example, the reforming grand vezir Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pa≥a dispatched his lieutenant to overhaul Egypt’s troubled finances. Arriving in Cairo with 2 000 troops in 1670, this new governor set about reimposing central control over Egypt’s revenues6. A key tac- tic in this enterprise appears to have been empowering regimental officers at the expense of beys. Since the duties and tenures of the officers were far better defined than those of the beys, they were more suscepti- ble to bureaucratic control by the Porte. Ultimately, however, these attempted reforms only served to consoli- date a regimental officer elite that, following the familiar pattern, chal- lenged the authority of later governors. By far the most influential mem- ber of this elite was the officer known as Hasan Aga Bilifya. Yet to the historian, Hasan Aga is not a highly visible strongman; he hardly leaps off the pages of chronicles and archival documents. Rather, he is the sort of figure who is omnipresent in the background, pulling strings. A governor is expelled; Hasan Aga is behind his expulsion. A troublemaker is exe- cuted; his execution is carried out with Hasan Aga’s approval. A power- ful grandee endows a mosque; Hasan Aga signs the endowment deed. Hasan Aga Bilifya is known to us through the various Arabic and Turkish chronicles of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Egypt as the 5 Shaw, op. cit., pp. 38-39. 6 On Kara Ibrahim Pa≥a’s reforms, see Mehmed b. Yusuf al-Hallaq, Târîh-i Mısır-ı Kâhire, Istanbul University Library, T.Y. 628, fols. 203ff; Shaw, op. cit., pp. 287-294. 138 JANE HATHAWAY longtime aga, or commander, of the Gönüllüyan corps at the end of the seventeenth century. The Gönüllüyan, or “Volunteers,” were a cavalry regiment of some 1240 members whose duties included delivering mes- sages, collecting taxes, and keeping order in Egypt’s subprovinces; as such, they were far less numerous and influential than the infantry corps, the Janissaries (Mustahfizan) and cAzeban, headquartered in Cairo’s citadel7. Notwithstanding, Hasan Aga Bilifya was, for all practical pur- poses, running Egypt from roughly 1694 until his death (of natural causes) in 1704. To be precise, he headed a triumvirate that the Sublime Porte seemed to feel was uniquely equipped to carry out its orders. The other two members of this triumvirate were Hasan Aga’s son-in-law, the defterdar, or treasurer, Ismail Bey, and his protégé, the Janissary kâhya Mustafa al-Kazdaglı8. Evidence of this trio’s authority is not lacking in either archival or narrative sources. An imperial order of 1698 addresses not only the officials typically named in such an order — governor, chief judge (kadı), pilgrimage commander, defterdar — but also Hasan Aga and Mustafa Kâhya. Meanwhile, the Egyptian chronicler al-Damurdashi refers to the tenure of the Ottoman governor Ismail Pa≥a (1694-1697) as “the regime of Ismail Pa≥a and Hasan Aga Bilifya” (dawlat Ismac¤l Basha wa Hasan Agha Bilifya)9. Hasan Aga wielded such formidable influence above all because of the strength of his household: that is, the group of clients whom he col- lected around him. He was a uniquely shrewd household-builder at a time when, I believe, household membership — membership in the entourage of an influential personage — was becoming critical to advancement and even participation in Ottoman Egypt’s military soci- ety10. Registers of the salaries of Egypt’s soldiery from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries reveal growing numbers of soldiers in all seven regiments who are billed as followers (atba{, s. tabi{) of regimental officers, of beys, of imperial officials, or even of ulema or 7 Ömer Lutfi Barkan, Osmanlı imparatorlugunda ziraî ekonominin hukukî ve malî esasları, Istanbul, 1943, Vol. I, chapter CV, “Mısır Kanunnâmesi”, p. 355; Shaw, op. cit., pp. 196-197, 210. 8 Kâhya, or ketÌüda, was a rank second to that of aga. By the eighteenth century, however, most regiments were dominated in actual fact by their kâhyas. 9 Istanbul, Ba≥bakanlık Osmanlı Ar≥ivi, Mühimme Defteri 111, No.

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