The Collapse of Rural Order in Ottoman Anatolia The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage Politics, Society and Economy Edited by Suraiya Faroqhi Halil İnalcık Boğaç Ergene Advisory Board Fikret Adanır – Antonis Anastasopoulos – Idris Bostan Palmira Brummett – Amnon Cohen – Jane Hathaway Klaus Kreiser – Hans Georg Majer – Ahmet Yaşar Ocak Abdeljelil Temimi VOLUME 61 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/oeh The Collapse of Rural Order in Ottoman Anatolia Amasya 1576–1643 By Oktay Özel LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: Graving: J.B. Hilair & J.A. Pierron, in M. Le Comte de Choiseaul-Gouffier, Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce (adapted by Harun Yeni). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Özel, Oktay, author. Title: The collapse of rural order in Ottoman Anatolia : Amasya 1576-1643 / by Oktay Özel. Description: Boston ; Leiden : Brill, [2016] | Series: The Ottoman Empire and its heritage ; v. 61 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed. Identifiers: LCCN 2015047908 (print) | LCCN 2015046558 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004311244 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004309715 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Amasya (Amasya İli, Turkey)—History. | Amasya İli (Turkey)—History. | Turkey—History—Ottoman Empire, 1288–1918. Classification: LCC DS51.A45 (print) | LCC DS51.A45 O94 2016 (ebook) | DDC 956.3/8—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047908 Want or need Open Access? Brill Open offers you the choice to make your research freely accessible online in exchange for a publication charge. Review your various options on brill.com/brill-open. Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. 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To Claire ∵ Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Figures and Tables xi Notes on Spelling xii 1 Introduction 1 The Subject 1 The Sources (mufassal [= detailed] avârız Registers) 8 On the “Decline” Literature 12 2 Geography and Politics 20 Amasya: Making of an Ottoman Province 20 Rural Society: Limitations and Relational Matrix 39 3 Land, Society, and Empire (Through 1576) 44 Peasants and Nomads 44 Notables (mâlikâne Holders) 62 Timariots 76 4 The Collapse of Rural Order: A Comparison (1576–1643) 89 Settlement Patterns 92 Population 110 Society 120 5 What Happened? An Assessment 134 The Context Reviewed 136 Nature and Climate at Work 146 The Celâlîs 150 The Consequences 166 1643 Recontextualised 177 6 Conclusion 182 viii contents Appendix I: Tahri̇r and Avârız Registers of Amasya 191 The Sources 191 Survey Orders for the avârız Register of 1643 197 Appendix II: Revenue Holders and Revenue Distribution 205 [Timarhâ-i] Eşkincüyân in c. 1480 and their Situation in Subsequent Registers 205 Mâlikâne Holders, 1520–1576 (According to TT 387 and TK26) 210 Pious Foundations (vakıfs or waqfs) and the Revenues Allocated to them in 1520 216 Zeâmet and Timar Holdings/Holders, c. 1480–1576 219 Revenue Distribution, c. 1480–1576 221 Appendix III: Urban Population in the Province of Rûm, 1520–1643 225 Appendix IV: Rural Settlements with their Tax-Paying Population (c. 1480–1643) 227 Bibliography 249 Index 272 Map of Amasya 282 Acknowledgements The present volume owes a great deal to generous support and help from a number of mentors, colleagues, and institutions. I should first acknowledge my mentors and colleagues from Hacettepe University, where I was working at the time of the initial research: Bahaeddin Yediyıldız, Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, Özkan İzgi, Mehmet Öz, Fahri Unan, Fatma Acun, and Yunus Koç. They gave me great support throughout the research and contributed in different ways to the first draft of the text; I am most grateful to them. I should specifically emphasize the clarity of vision on the most complicated matters and the expertise on defterology that Mehmet Öz shared with me throughout. Similarly, Evgeni Radushev of Bilkent University has, during the past ten years, wholeheartedly kept reminding me of what should be my primary job—i.e., this book; we have exchanged views on many matters in long, enthusiastic, and colorful discus- sions, while also working on a joint project on similar sources for the Ottoman Balkans. I am more than grateful to Evgeni’s sincere and always fruitful collabo- ration, which still continues at full speed to this very moment. Secondly, I have great appreciation of the scholarship and meticulous- ness in the historical profession of Colin Imber, under whose supervision I carried out most of the research and wrote the initial version of this volume as a doctoral dissertation in 1993. I am also grateful for his pleasantly liberal attitude throughout my research and writing at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Manchester. Similarly, Colin Heywood and Edmund Herzig gave me constructive criticism, encouraging me greatly with their comments on the initial text. Evgenia Kermeli, Suraiya Faroqhi, Fikret Adanır, Caroline Finkel, and M. Yavuz Erler shared their thoughts and mate- rial with me and helped in various matters. Helen Pearson, Sarah Thomas, and Maria-Ninu Stepanski translated materials from languages I could not read. I am also grateful to all of them. I was lucky enough to enjoy close collaborations, at various stages of the con- stant rewriting processes, with such mentors and colleagues as Halil İnalcık, Rifaʿat ʿAli Abou-El-Haj, Geoffrey Parker, William Griswold, Linda Darling, Faruk Tabak, Nenad Moacanin, Kaan Durukan, Günhan Börekçi, Kayhan Orbay, Sam White, Boğaç A. Ergene, Grigor Boykov, and Maria Kiprovska, who have all kindly shared their opinions on the different versions of the manuscript lead- ing towards this book and contributed greatly to my rethinking of certain mat- ters. Though I retained most of my initial ideas and arguments in my venture into a defterological study of the Ottoman 17th-century crisis, thanks to their insightful criticism and suggestions, I have greatly improved what eventually became the final manuscript for this book. The critiques of two anonymous x acknowledgements reviewers for Leiden Brill academic publishing, and, once more, of Suraiya Faroqhi as one of the series editors, proved particularly useful in making me realize that some of my arguments still needed further clarity, refinement, and elaboration. I am deeply indebted to them, and any weaknesses this work still retains is, needless to say, entirely mine. During the research, I have worked in various archives and libraries in Turkey, Britain, and the United States. Studying in the archives is not the easiest thing: even the usual procedures often seem like unusually painful obstacles, testing the limits of our patience. However, at such times, the constructive atti- tude of a number of staff proves, as always, to make things immensely easier. I am therefore thankful to all those who have done their best to make it bear- able in the Prime Ministerial Ottoman Archive and the Atatürk Kütüphanesi in Istanbul, as well as in the Tapu Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü Kuyud-i Kadime Archive, the National Library, and the library of Turkish Historical Society in Ankara. The same applies to the staff of the great libraries of John Rylands in Manchester, SOAS and the Senate House in London, and the Widener of Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nahide Işık Demirakın, Seda Erkoç and Muhsin Soyudoğan, my younger col- leagues at Bilkent University, were marvelous with their painstaking labour on the reworking of the manuscript at different stages, providing me with most timely support, both moral and technical. I greatly appreciate their sincere friendship and unconditional presence whenever needed. The same applies for the efforts of Chris Taylor and Michael Douglas Sheridan in improving the English of the manuscript. Michael, in particular, has not only proven to be a more than meticulous and pleasantly patient editor, but he has also been a wonderful colleague of the same seventeenth century, whose contribution to the final text is beyond any appreciation in words. I am grateful to him. Finally, I owe more than a simple appreciation to Claire Thomas/Özel, who had to make a sharp change from molecular biology to Ottoman history to find herself in the alien world of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman history. She was not only dragged into such a journey as a challenge yet with painstaking labour on the first draft of the text years ago, but also ended up in the intriguing new world of a strange country, Turkey. I owe the deepest gratitude in love to her, with my sincerest admiration of her constant support, patience, and tolerance, which started then, and unendingly continues to this very moment. This volume, then, is naturally and delightfully dedicated to her. Oktay Özel Ankara/Leiden, September 2015 List of Figures and Tables Figures 1 The Province of Rûm in 1576 21 2 Development of Ottoman administrative divisions (nahiyes) of the kazâ of Amasya (c. 1480–1643) 26 3 Structure of society in rural Amasya (15th–16th centuries) 43 4 Distribution of the peasants and nomads in the kazâ of Amasya in 1576 47 5 Total arable land in the kazâ of Amasya in 1576 (as “çiftlik”) 54 6 Social composition of timariots, c.