Renegotiating Family Relations

The Ottoman state of the eighteenth century was an empire weakened by military defeats and territorial losses. These failures led to an increased cultural exchange between Europe and the Ottomans, who felt the need to reform military technology and state organisation. In the second half of the eighteenth century, administration was transformed into a more centralised apparatus supported by a growing bureaucracy. Symptomatic of the state's financial problems, fiscal policy and increasing centralisation was the treatment of endowments and their properties during that time. Abdülhamid I (r. 1774–1789) established the Superintendence of Imperial Endowments (Evkaf-ı Hümayun Nezareti), to which he annexed the endowments of the imperial harem – that is, the endowments founded by imperial women, including the Atik Valide Vakfı. The purpose of the new ministry – which due to the maneouvering of the Chief Black Eunuch whose powers and interests it directly challenged soon became ineffective – was to create a legal and administrative framework to channel the endowment revenues into the near-empty state coffers, rather than back into the endowments. In order to attract more renters willing to invest capital into endowed revenue-generating property – now no longer supported by its own revenues – the ministry encouraged the already widespread practice of double rent (icareteyn) as the norm rather than the exception.