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Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720–1829

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Donald Quataert
Donald Quataert
Affiliation:
Professor in the Department of History, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, N.Y. 13902-6000, USA.
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Extract

In 1826, Sultan Mahmud II orchestrated the slaughter of 6,000–7,000 janissaries and, in order to incinerate any janissary remnants that had taken refuge there, burned the Belgrade Forest outside Istanbul. During his reign (1808–39), the sultan attacked many of the other bases of the ancien régime, such as the timar system, the lifetime tax farms, and the political autonomy of provincial notables. He also centralized the pious foundations, brought them under a special ministry, and expropriated their revenues. Such stories of Sultan Mahmud's dramatic and violent policies, as well as their 18th-century origins and their 19th-century legacies, are familiar ones in Ottoman and Middle Eastern history. It is a commonplace that Sultan Mahmud aimed to dismantle the power of the military and religious classes in favor of a new bureaucracy of administrators and scribes. And it is also known that his efforts had a major impact on the subsequent evolution of the Tanzimat reform programs during the later 19th century.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , August 1997 , pp. 403 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

NOTES

Author's note: An earlier version of this paper was presented to the conference on “Istanbul: The Making of a City,” held at the University of Texas at Austin in March 1995. I am indebted to the following for their assistance in preparing this version: Howard Brown, Cengiz Kirli, Walter Denny, Brendan McConville, Jean Quataert, Ariel Salzmann, and the four anonymous readers for IJMES.

1 The estimate of the dead is from Ed. Engelhardt, , La Turquie et le Tanzimat (Paris, 1882), 11, n. 1.Google Scholar

2 For the standard accounts of this process, see Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London, 1961);Google ScholarShaw, Stanford Jay and Shaw, Ezel Kural, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Cambridge, 1977), II.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See Berkes, Niyazi, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal, 1964), 92,Google Scholar for a somewhat different view of Sultan Mahmud's reforms. Also, Çizakça, Murat, “Cash Waqfs of Bursa, 1555–1823,” Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient (08, 1995), 349.Google Scholar

3 For the text of the law, dated 6 Şevval 1244, see Lûtfî, Ahmet, Lûtfî Tarihi (Istanbul, 1291 A.H.), II, 269–73.Google Scholar See also his remarks on p. 148.

4 All of the laws discussed here concern behavior in the public sphere only. For an enlightening comparison of clothing changes in Japan and the Ottoman Empire and the differences between enforcement of behavior in the public and private spheres, see Esenbel, Selçuk, “The Anguish of Civilized Behavior: The Use of Western Cultural Forms in the Everyday Lives of the Meijii Japanese and the Ottoman Turks during the Nineteenth Century,” Japan Review 5 (1994): 145–85.Google Scholar

5 This argument is sketched out briefly in my “Janissaries, Artisans and the Question of Ottoman Decline, 1730–1826,” Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire, 1730–1914, ed. Quataert, Donald (Istanbul, 1993), 197–203,Google Scholar and sources therein.

The connection between guilds and the ahi organizations is still not well understood. For some interesting insights into this period, see Karamustafa, Ahmet, God's Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200–1550 (Salt Lake City, 1994).Google Scholar

6 For an excellent introduction to consumption issues in general, including clothing laws, see the various contributions in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. Brewer, John and Porter, Roy (London, 1993).Google Scholar See also Reid, Anthony, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680, I (New Haven, 1988).Google Scholar

7 Batterberry, Michael and Batterberry, Ariane, Fashion: The Mirror of History (New York, 1982), 49–50;Google ScholarBoehn, Max von, Modes and Manners, trans, from the German (New York, 1932), I:168–71.Google Scholar

8 For details of the regulations, see Brewer and Porter, Consumption; Von Boehn, Modes and Manners; Batterberry and Batterberry, Fashion; and sources cited later, esp. in n. 16. Also see Eisenbart, Liselotte Constanze, Kleiderordnungen der deutschen Städte zwischen 1350 und 1700 (Göttingen, 1962).Google Scholar

9 Boehn, Von, Modes and Manners, 1:251–52.Google Scholar

10 Batterberry, and Batterberry, , Fashion, 88.Google Scholar

11 Davenport, William, The Book of Costume (New York, 1948), I:190.Google Scholar Also, Payne, Blanche, History of Costume: From the Ancient Egyptians to the Twentieth Century (New York, 1965), 183, 195–96, 200.Google Scholar

12 Herald, Jacqueline, Renaissance Dress in Italy 1400–1500 (London, 1981), 41.Google Scholar

13 Boehn, Von, Modes and Manners, III: 170.Google Scholar

14 Perrot, Philippe, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century, trans, from the French (Princeton, 1994), 18.Google Scholar

15 See for example, Fairchilds, Cissie, “The Production and Marketing of Populuxe Goods in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” in Consumption, 228–48;Google ScholarMukerji, Chandra, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism (New York, 1983), 186 ff;Google Scholar and McKendrick, Neil, Brewer, John, and Plumb, J. H., The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth Century England (Bloomington, 1982), 38–48.Google Scholar

16 Perrot, , Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 15.Google Scholar

17 Herald, , Renaissance Dress in Italy, 39;Google ScholarBaldwin, Frances Elizabeth, Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England (Baltimore, 1926), 131, 266;Google ScholarWebb, Wilfred Mark, The Heritage of Dress (London, 1912), 260;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBoehn, Von, Modes and Manners, II: 133.Google Scholar

18 Sponsler, Claire, “Narrating the Social Order: Medieval Clothing Laws,” Clio (Spring 1992), 280.Google Scholar She prefers the term “clothing laws” to “sumptuary laws” because the purpose of the latter is to curb excess. In this article, I have followed her usage.

19 Ibid., 266.

20 Boehn, Von, Modes and Manners, I:251;Google Scholar also ibid., II:192.

21 Perrot, , Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 10.Google Scholar He discusses the advantages of clothing legislation for the aristocracy but does not deal with its utility for other social groups.

22 Boehn, Von, Modes and Manners, IV:249.Google Scholar In England, although James I repealed clothing legislation in 1604, a 1745 measure prohibited the Scots from wearing the tartan; Webb, , Heritage of Dress, 261.Google Scholar

23 Calvert, Karin, “The Function of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America,” in Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Carson, Cary, Hoffman, Ronald, and Albert, Peter J. (Charlottesville and London, 1994), 259–61.Google Scholar See also Bushman, Richard L., The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, 1992).Google Scholar

24 Tott, Baron Francois de, Memoirs of Baron de Tott, English ed. (London, 1785), I:119–20,Google Scholar reporting on the accession ceremonies of Sultan Mustafa III (1757–74). I have not determined when this practice first became part of the procession ceremonies.

25 Hammer, Joseph von, Das osmanischen Reichs: Staatsverfassung und Staatsverwaltung (Vienna, 1815), I:436–49.Google Scholar

26 Hammer, J. de, Histoire de l'empire ottoman, trans, of his 1834 Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches (Paris, 1835–1843), IV: 142–43.Google Scholar

27 Hammer, , Histoire, V:24–25.Google Scholar Specifically, the “ordinary classes wore either a pershani, dulbent or a shemle, one carelessly wrapped around the head.”

I must note that elsewhere in his history, Hammer makes an error on the issue of tobacco consumption, a subject that I currently am researching. He correctly states that the Kanun-î reaya included a section on the payment of taxes called resm-i duhân, but he erroneously describes this tax to be one on the use of smoking tobacco (“le droit sur l'usage du tabac à fumer”), VI:271, n. 6. Rather, the duhân resmi mentioned by Hammer is a tax on land use. For example, see, inter alia, Akgündüz, Ahmed, Osmanli Kanunnaâmeleri (Istanbul, 1990), II:158,Google Scholar from the era of Bayezid II (1481–1512); ibid. (Istanbul, 1991), III:106, 418, 466, 494, for examples from Selim I (1512–20); and ibid. (Istanbul, 1992), IV:316, from the era of the Lawgiver.

Hammer himself points out elsewhere in his history (VIII:90) that tobacco was introduced in the Ottoman lands only about 1605.

28 Perrot, , Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 16.Google Scholar The firmness and rigor that Sultan Suleyman employed in establishing and codifying dress might suggest an end to this mobility; this conclusion could be in error, and the point needs further exploration.

29 Hammer, , Das osmanischen Reichs, 436–49.Google Scholar

30 Hammer, , Histoire, VI:275–79.Google Scholar

31 There is a wide body of literature linking the early modern state to social discipline—for example, in the workplace and in schools. For a general overview of the research, see Hsia, R. Po-Chia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe, 1550–1750 (London and New York, 1989).Google Scholar

32 I have found perhaps twenty examples of legislation concerning these gender, religious, and social distinctions. Madeline Zilfi seems to have found others; see her “Stories from the Mahalle: Urban Encounters in Eighteenth Century Istanbul” (unpublished paper, 1 March 1995), presented to the 12–25 March 1995 conference, “Istanbul: The Making of a City,” University of Texas at Austin. For yet other examples, see Göçek, Fatma Müge, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (New York, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 See Zilfi, “Stories from the Mahalle”; idem., “Women and Society in the Tulip Era,” in Women, Family and Divorce Laws in Islamic Society, ed. Sonbol, A. (Syracuse, 1995).Google Scholar

34 Zilfi, “Stories from the Mahalle.”

35 Zilfi, “Women and Society.” Here and in “Stories from the Mahalle,” Zilfi offers important observations about the shift to leisure that characterizes the Tulip Period.

36 Berkes, , Secularism in Turkey, >30–45;30–45;>Google ScholarAltinay, Ahmet Refik, Lâle Devri (Ankara, 1973);Google Scholar Zilfi, “Women and Society.”

37 Carson et al.. Of Consuming Interests; and Bushman, Refinement of America.

38 For a discussion of Muslim domination of mercantile activities in earlier centuries, and the broader issue of Muslim and non-Muslim participation in trade, see Inalcik, Halil with Quataert, Donald, ed., An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914 (Cambridge, 1994)—for example, pp. 188 ff, 474 ff, 695 ff, 837Google Scholar fit, and sources therein.

39 The quotation, from Porter and Brewer, Consumption, refers to European courts.

40 And, Metin, A History of Theatre and Popular Entertainment in Turkey (Ankara, 1963–1964), 17–18;Google ScholarSertoğlu, Midhat, “Istanbul, 1520'den Cumhuriyete kadar,” in Islâm Ansiklopedesi 5, II (Istanbul, 1967), 1214/19.Google Scholar

41 Quote from And, , History of Theatre, 18Google Scholar; also, see Hammer, , Histoire, XIV:41–46,62–65;Google Scholar and Faroqhi, Suraiya, Kultur und Alltag im Osmanischen Reich (Munich, 1995), 187 ffGoogle Scholar.

42 A more precise understanding of the role that satisfaction of court needs played in forming the 18thcentury Ottoman bourgeoisie requires investigation.

43 For the pathbreaking analysis of this phenomenon, see Salzmann, Ariel, “Measures of Empire: Tax Farmers and the Ottoman Ancien Regime, 1695–1807” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1995)Google Scholar. See Hammer, , Histoire, XII:347–49Google Scholar, for a 1693 use of clothing laws as a tool in elite power struggles in Istanbul.

44 Faroqhi, Kultur und Alltag, and sources therein.

45 Koçu, Reṣad Ekrem, Türk Giyim, Kuşam ve süslenme sÖzlüǧü (Ankara, 1967), 86Google Scholar. He dates the law at June 1725. Refik, Ahmed, Onikinci asr-i hicrî'de Istanbul Hayati (1689–1785) (Istanbul, 1988, rprnt.), 86–88Google Scholar, says June 1726/Şevval 1138. Hammer, , Histoire, XIV:181–82Google Scholar, says September 1727/Muharrem 1140. The law cited in Hammer, , Histoire, XI:347–49Google Scholar, dated 1693 and cited earlier, can be seen as one regulating modesty.

46 Hammer, , Histoire, XIV: 181–82Google Scholar.

47 See Zilfi, “Stories from the Mahalle,” for a discussion of the enlarged public sphere being created as a result.

48 Frangakis-Syrett, Elena, The Commerce of Smyrna in the Eighteenth Century (1700–1820) (Athens, 1992)Google Scholar, shows steady trade increases in late-18th-century Izmir; Inalcik with Quataert, , Economic and Social History, 736, Table III:2Google Scholar, shows impressive increases of total trade in Salonica. The rising revenues of mukataas based on trade are amply documented by Genç, Mehmet; for example, his “Osmanli Ekonomisi ve Savaş,” Yapit 49, 4 (1984): 86–93Google Scholar.

49 Hammer, , Histoire, XV:284Google Scholar. Also, Zilfi “Stories from the Mahalle,” and idem, “Women and Society.”

50 Tott, De, Memoirs, 115Google Scholar.

51 Ibid., 124–26.

52 Sertoǧlu, , “Istanbul,” in Islâm Ansiklopedesi, 1214/22Google Scholar; and Efendi, şem'dânî-zâde Findiklili Süleyman, şem'dânî-zâde Findiklili Süleyman Efendi Tarihi. Mür'i't-Tevârih, modern Turkish rendition by Münir Aktepe (Istanbul, 1967), II.A:12Google Scholar. See şem'danî-zade, , Sem'dânî-zâde, II.A:36, 69–70Google Scholar, for additional regulations of Sultan Mustafa III. Also, Tott, de, Memoirs, 124–26Google Scholar. And, finally, see Zilfi, “Stories from the Mahalle,” for a fine analysis of the beggar story.

53 How well the clothing laws helped Sultan Osman is unclear, because he died of natural causes less than three years later, just short of his fifty-ninth birthday. Sultan Mustafa, for his part, reigned for sixteen years and died of natural causes just as his empire suffered catastrophic military defeats, rivaling those at the end of the 17th century. The 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca registered the consequent territorial losses, de-Ottomanized the Black Sea, and opened the way for the destruction of the Crimean Tatars as well as mounting Russian interference in Ottoman internal affairs.

54 Inalcik, with Quataert, , Economic and Social History, 639 ffGoogle Scholar, where Bruce McGowan summarizes his own work and that of Mehmet Genç, for the 18th century.

55 şevket Pamuk, “Appendix: Money in the Ottoman Empire, 1326–1914,” in ibid., 970.

56 Karal, Enver Ziya, Selim III'un Hat-ti Hümayunlari-Nizami Cedit, 1789–1807 (Ankara, 1946), 100–102Google Scholar, does not date the decree. For other regulations of Selim III, respectively concerning women and the Ottoman minorities, see ibid., 102–3, 136–37; Refik, Ahmed, Önüçüncü asr-t hicrî'de Istanbul Hayati (1786–1882), (Istanbul, 1988, rprnt.), 4Google Scholar; and Başbakanlik Osmanh Arşivi (hereafter BOA) Hat-ti Hümayun (hereafter HH) 54918. Also Shaw, Stanford Jay, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789–1807 (Cambridge Mass., 1971), 33–34, 76–78, 175CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Refik, , Onikinci, 86–88Google Scholar.

58 This was hardly the first reference to the drain on the treasury; there is a long history of fear of state bankruptcy as a motive for controlling consumption. See, for example, the fine quotation from the chronicler Mustafa Naima (ca. 1665–1716) in Halil Inalcik, “The Ottoman Cotton Market and India: The Role of Labor Cost in Market Competition,” trans. Howard, Douglas, in The Middle East and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire: Essays on Economy and Society, ed. Inalcik, Halil (Bloomington, 1993), 272–73Google Scholar. My thanks to Elizabeth B. Frierson for calling this quote to my attention. See also, for example, şem'dânî-zâde, II.A:69–70, for a 1764–1775/1178 regulation.Google Scholar

59 Karal, , Selim III, 102, 136Google Scholar. Notably, as the quotation shows, the competitive assault was not coming from European makers but, rather, from the East.

60 See Quataert, , Workers, Peasants and Economic Change, 141–57, 197–203Google Scholar.

61 I am leaving aside, for further investigation, the question of the precise nature of the janissary–worker relationship.

62 Pamuk, , “Appendix,” in Economic and Social History, 970Google Scholar.

63 Koçu, , Türk Giyim, 113–14Google Scholar. In the name of the new military unit, Victorious Muslim Soldiers, the sultan appealed for the loyalty of his Muslim subjects, while his 1829 law threatened to jeopardize their status.

For some of the regulations concerning military attire changes, see BOA HH 17584, 17614, 17647, 17890, 18446, 18671.

64 Koçu, , Türk Giyim, 114Google Scholar.

65 Lûtfî, , Lûtfî Tarihi, II, 269–73, 148Google Scholar.

66 It is widely known that the ilmiye were permitted to continue to wear turbans and robes and that, more generally, the religious hierarchies were left outside the clothing-regulation process. The implications of this policy have been analyzed by Berkes, Secularism in Turkey, and others.

67 This practice was vastly expanded by Sultan Abdul Mecid. My thanks to Walter Denny for his helpful remarks on this matter. See also BOA HH 17594.

68 Later, Mahmud allegedly said: “I distinguish among my subjects, Muslims in the mosque, Christians in the church and Jews in the synagogue, but there is no difference among them in any other way.” Quoted in Levy, Avigdor, The Jews in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, 1994), 103, 145, n. 358Google Scholar, for a discussion of the dating of the statement.

69 The story of the Tanzimat reforms is well known, as is the lack of non-Muslim participation in the 19th-century Ottoman military and the under-representation of non-Muslims in the civil bureaucracy. On the latter subject, see the excellent article by Findley, Carter V., “The Acid Test of Ottomanism: The Acceptance of Non-Muslims in the Late Ottoman Bureaucracy,” in Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Braude, Benjamin and Lewis, Bernard (New York, 1982), I:339–68Google Scholar.

70 See, i.a., photographs published in Inal, Mahmud Kemal, Son Sadriazmlar, 3 vols., 4th printing (Istanbul, 1969)Google Scholar; Findley, Carter V., Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton, 1989), for example, 198, 214, 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gavin, Carney E. S., Imperial Self-Portrait: The Ottoman Empire as Revealed in the Sultan Abdul Hamid II's Photographic Albums (Cambridge, Mass., 1988)Google Scholar; Vaczek, Louis and Buckland, Gail, Travelers in Ancient Lands (Boston and New York, 1981)Google Scholar.

71 Berkes, , Secularism in Turkey, 125Google Scholar.

72 Karal, Enver Ziya, Osmanli Tarihi, V, Nizam-i Cedit ve Tanzimat Devirleri (1789–1856) (Ankara, 1961), 158Google Scholar.

73 Berkes, , Secularism in Turkey, 125–26Google Scholar. This is a part of the quotation cited earlier on the “alacrity”.

74 Koçu, , Türk Giyim, 114Google Scholar.

75 Koçu Türk Giyim. Despite his own statement, the tale recounted by Koçu also credits the desire for social differentiation from the official classes as a motive for the popular opposition. Berkes, , Secularism in Turkey, 124Google Scholar, offers a religious explanation: “Shoes, pants, coats, shirts did not encounter resistance. The real difficulty arose over the question of headgear. It is difficult to explain why. … The only clear explanation appears to be religious.”

76 Quataert, Donald, “The Social History of Labor in the Ottoman Empire, 1800–1914,” in The Social History of Labor in the Middle East, ed. Goldberg, Ellis Jay (Boulder, Colo., 1996), 23, 35, n. 7Google Scholar. The 1831 measure removed esnaf masters' right to gain monopolistic access to work sites through the issuance of new gedik certificates; the action may have helped the rank and file in their struggle with the masters.

77 Demirel, Ömer, II. Mahmud döneminde Sivas'ta esnaf teşkilâtt ve üretim-tüketim ilişkileri (Ankara, 1989), 57, n. 81Google Scholar, and sources therein document popular resistance to the fez in the Anatolian city of Sivas. This information, randomly collected, suggests the presence of resistance in other regions, as well.

78 Slade, Adolphus, Records of Travels in Turkey, Greece, etc., new ed. (London, 1854), 194Google Scholar. For other examples of opposition to the fez, see ibid., 139–41, 379. Slade, a contemporary, vociferously opposed Mahmud's programs. The entire subject of popular resistance to Mahmud's anti-janissary actions and to his overall policies needs further study.

79 Koçu, , Türk Giyim, 115–16Google Scholar. Obviously, other factors in addition to opposing state policies also help to explain distinctive worker dress. For an illustrated list of various headgear in the 18th and 19th centuries, see Doras, Sebahaddin and Kocaman, Serafeddin, Osmanlilar Albümü, ikinci kitap (Istanbul, 1983), 129–31Google Scholar.

80 The black-and-white photographs are not always clear, but those available do not suggest any difference between Christian and Muslim workers. For photographs of Armenian workers, see Kevorkian, Raymond H. and Paboudjian, Paul B., Les Arméniens dans l'Empire Ottoman a la Veille du Génocide (Paris, 1992)Google Scholar. For photographs of Ottoman workers in general, see, for example, Eldem, Sedad Hakki, Istanbul Anilari (Istanbul, 1979)Google Scholar; Öztuncay, Bahattin, James Robertson: Pioneer of Photography in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul, 1992)Google Scholar; Gavin, Carney E. S., The Image of the East (Chicago, 1982)Google Scholar; Ihsanoǧlu, Ekmeleddin, Istanbul: A Glimpse into the Past (Istanbul, 1987)Google Scholar.

For a discussion of emulation as the cause of changing fashion, see, for example, the articles in Brewer and Porter, Consumption.

Whether workers' headgear became more or less homogeneous later in the 19th century is not clear.

81 Quataert, Donald, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1983)Google Scholar; idem, “Labor Politics and Policies in the Ottoman Empire: Porters and the Sublime Porte, 1826–1896,” in Humanist and Scholar: Essays in Honor of Andreas Tietze, ed. Lowry, Heath W. and Quataert, Donald (Istanbul, 1993), 59–69Google Scholar; idem, “The Employment Policies of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, 1881–1909,” in Workers, Peasants and Economic Change, 137–40Google Scholar.

82 Gautier, Theophile, Constantinople (Paris, 1856), 170, 90–91Google Scholar. On spectatorship, see Walkowitz, Judith R., City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, 1992), 15–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.