Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vpsfw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T20:17:41.308Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Treaties of Erzurum (1823 and 1848) and the Changing Status of Iranians in the Ottoman Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Bruce Masters
Bruce Masters*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Wesleyan University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Iranian merchants, artists, and scholars had an almost continuous presence in the Ottoman Empire from its very beginnings in the thirteenth century. After the Arab provinces were added to the empire in the sixteenth century, their numbers were further augmented by pilgrims on their way to the holy cities of the Hijaz and Iraq. As such, in terms of actual numbers, during any period of its history there were probably more Iranians resident in the Ottoman Empire than from any other foreign state. This assertion, however, cannot be proven empirically, for before the nineteenth century the Ottoman sultans did not recognize the Iranians as constituting a “nation” along the model they had established for the European communities resident in the empire.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 1-4 , 1991 , pp. 3 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Support for the research of this article was provided by the Fulbright Islamic Civilization Research Program. Thanks also to the staffs of the Başbakanlik Arşivi (BBA) in Istanbul and the Syrian National Archives in Damascus for their assistance in making this research possible.

References

1. See for example, Inalcik, Halil, “Osmanhliİdare, Sosyal ve Ekonomik İlgili Belgeler: Bursa Kadi Sicillerinden Seçmeler,” Belgeler 10.14 (1980-81): 1-91Google Scholar.

2. Steensgaard, Niels, “Consuls and Nations in the Levant from 1570 to 1650,” Scandinavian Economic History Review 15: 13-55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. For a discussion of this source see Goffman, Daniel, Izmir and the Levantine World, 1550-1650 (Seattle: 1990), 147-54Google Scholar.

4. See, for example, the work by Kutukoglu, Mubahat, Osmanli-İngiliz İktisadî Münasebetleri, vol. 1, (1580-1838) (Ankara: 1974) and vol. 2, (1839-1850) (Istanbul: 1976)Google Scholar. The subject of North African Muslims in Ottoman Egypt is discussed in ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Maghāriba fi Mişr fi al-'aṣr al- ‘uthmāni (Tunis: 1982).

5. Dalsar, Fahri, Türk Sanayi ve Ticaret Tarihinde Bursa'da Ipekgilik (Istanbul: 1960), 131Google Scholar.

6. Riedlmayer, András, “Ottoman-Safavid Relations and the Anatolian Trade Routes: 1603-1618,” The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 5.1 (1981): 7-10Google Scholar. However, confiscation of property belonging to Iranians was an option exercised by local governors in Ottoman Iraq to augment their incomes, and this sometimes led to war (see Perry, John, Karim Khan Zand [Chicago: 1979], 171-2)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. For a discussion of the tension between the two see Fleischer, Cornell, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 261-72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Istanbul, BBA, Maliyeden Mudevver (MM) 2475, 76-8; MM 2742, 93-4; MM 2964, 132.

9. Fetvalan, Şeyhülislam Ebussuûd Efendi, ed. Duzdag, M. Ertugrul (Istanbul: 1983), 109-11Google Scholar.

10. There are numerous such sales contracts in Aleppo Court Records, vol. 51 (Syrian National Archives, Damascus).

11. I am relying on the English translation of the three major Ottoman-Iranian treaties of 1639, Kurdan, and Erzurum (1823) as they appear in Hurewitz, J. C., The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (New Haven: 1975)Google Scholar. Additionally, for the Treaty of Erzurum and the later protocols that do not appear in Hurewitz's work, I will be using Ottoman language versions of those agreements as preserved in volume 43/Iran of the Ecnebi Defterleri, Istanbul (BBA).

12. Longrigg, Stephen, Four Centuries of Modern Iraq (Oxford: 1925), 178Google Scholar; John Perry, Karim Khan Zand, 171-2.

13. Ochsenwald, William, Religion, Society, and the State in Arabia: The Hijaz Under Ottoman Control, 1840-1908 (Columbus: 1984), 123-4Google Scholar.

14. Ferrier, R. W., “The Armenians and the East India Company in Persia in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” Economic History Review, 2nd series 26 (1973): 38-62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Masters, Bruce, The Origins of Western Economic Dominance in the Middle East (New York: 1989), 79-88Google Scholar.

15. Istanbul, BBA, MM 3774: 38; MM 9838: 21.

16. Damascus, Syrian National Archives, Awamir al-Sultaniyya series (AS) Aleppo 1: 10; Istanbul, BBA, Muhimme Defterleri (MD) 100: 133; MM 9873: 233-4.

17. Istanbul, BBA, MM 7439; also discussed by Halil Sahillioglu in “Bir Tüccar Kervani,” Belgelerle Turk Tarih Dergisi 2.9 (1968): 63-9.

18. Istanbul, BBA, MM 2960: 40-41.

19. Damascus, Aleppo AS 2: 100.

20. Indian merchants in Baghdad had won the right to inventory the estates of the deceased from their own community in 1712, but gained no other rights and had no official representation at the Porte (Istanbul, BBA, MM 2777: 195).

21. Bruinessen, Martin van, Agha, Shaykh and State (London: 1992), 171-3Google Scholar; Longrigg, Six Centuries, 242-9.

22. Hurewitz, Middle East and North Afrcia, 80.

23. See for example cases in the Rusya Ecnebi Defter, Istanbul, BBA, Ecnebi 91: 4-5, 97.

24. Istanbul, BBA, Ecnebi 44: E.

25. Issawi, Charles, The Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914 (Chicago: 1971), 70-74Google Scholar.

26. Istanbul, BBA, Ecnebi 44: 14, 15.

27. See also Issawi, Charles, “The Tabriz-Trabzon Trade, 1830-1900: Rise and Decline of a Route,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 1 (1970): 18-27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28. Issawi, Economic History of Iran, 100.

29. Istanbul, BBA, Cevdet Hariciye, doc. 6635.

30. Findley, Carter, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire, (Princeton: 1980), 24Google Scholar.

31. Istanbul, BBA, Ecnebi 43: 8.

32. Damascus, Aleppo AS 55: 172.

33. Copies of these are preserved in Istanbul, BBA, Ecnebi Defterleri, vol. 44.

34. Istanbul, BBA, Kamil Kepici Muhtelif 135: 852.

35. Sousa, Nasim, The Capitulatory Regime of Turkey (Baltimore: 1933), 32Google Scholar.

36. A Shi'ite Pilgrimage to Mecca, 1885-1886: The Safarnamelt of Mirza Mohammad Hosayn Farahani ed., trans, and annot. Farmayan, Hafez and Daniel, Elton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

37. Damascus, Aleppo AS 67/, 55, 57, 112.