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A tribe as an economic actor: The Cihanbeyli tribe and the meat provisioning of İstanbul in the early Tanzimat era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2019

Yonca Köksal  and
Mehmet Polatel
Yonca Köksal
Affiliation:
Department of History, Koç University, Rumelifeneri Yolu 34450, Sarıyer, İstanbul, Turkey; ykoksal@ku.edu.tr.
Mehmet Polatel
Affiliation:
USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, 650 West 35th St., Los Angeles, CA 90089-2571; polatel@usc.edu.
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Abstract

This article studies how the Cihanbeyli tribe became a crucial economic actor for the meat supply of İstanbul, by focusing on a conflict between the tribe’s leader, Alişan Bey, and the Russian trader David Savalan, which lasted from the 1840s to the 1850s in and around the province of Ankara. Two important processes of the early Tanzimat era had an impact on the Cihanbeyli’s role in animal trade. First, as part of the centralization project of the Tanzimat, the Cihanbeyli tribe was sedentarized in the 1840s and 1850s. Second, although the Ottoman state adopted liberal economic policies during the Tanzimat, the provisioning of meat to the imperial capital continued until 1857. Therefore, the article examines the Cihanbeyli’s role in the animal trade in the light of these administrative and economic changes. Our findings support the argument that tribes were an integral part of the imperial economy, politics, and society. The dependence of the Ottoman state on the supply of meat by the Cihanbeyli increased significantly from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. This opposes the conventional view that posits tribes as primordial forms hindering economic and social development in the modernization processes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Keywords

Meat provisioninganimal tradestate reformsTanzimatCihanbeyli tribeOttoman Empire
Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 61 , November 2019 , pp. 97 - 123
Copyright
© New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

References

Ottoman Archives of the Republic of Turkey’s Presidential State Archives

(Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanlığı, Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı, Osmanlı Arşivleri; BOA)

A.M (Sadaret Müteferrik Belgeler)

A.MKT (Sadaret Mektubi Kalemi Evrakı)

A.MKT.MVL (Sadaret Mektubi Kalemi Meclis-i Vala Evrakı)

A.MKT.UM (Sadaret Mektubi Kalemi Umum Vilayat Evrakı)

AE.SSLM (Ali Emiri Yavuz Sultan Selim)

Ayniyat Defterleri

BEO (Bab-ı Ali Evrak Odası)

C.BLD (Cevdet Belediye)

DH.MKT (Dahiliye Nezareti Mektubi Kalem)

HR.MKT (Hariciye Nezareti Mektubi Kalemi Evrakı)

İ.MMS (İrade Meclis-i Mahsus)

İ.MSM (İrade Mesail-i Mühimme)

ŞD (Şura-yı Devlet Evrakı)

Y.PRK.AZJ (Yıldız Perakende Evrak Arzuhal ve Jurnaller)

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Ahmed Cevdet Pasha. Mar’ûzât. Edited by Halaçoğlu, Yusuf. İstanbul: Çağrı Yayınları, 1980.Google Scholar
Ahmed Cevdet Paşa. Tezâkir. 3 vols. Edited by Aykut, Şevki Nezihi, Özcan, Abdülkadir, and İpşirli, Mehmet. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1991.Google Scholar
Refik, Ahmet (Altınay). Anadolu’da Türk Aşiretleri (966–1200). İstanbul: Enderun, 1989.Google Scholar
Barakat, Nora Elizabeth. “An Empty Land? Nomads and Property Administration in Hamidian Syria.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2015. Google Scholar
Barakat, Nora Elizabeth. “Marginal Actors? The Role of Bedouin in Ottoman Administration of Animals as Property in the District of Salt, 1870–1912.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58 (2015): 105–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baran, Mamo. Koçgiri: Kuzey-Batı Dersim. İstanbul: Tohum, 2002.Google Scholar
Barkan, Ömer Lütfü. “Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Bir İskan ve Kolonizasyon Metodu Olarak Sürgünler.” İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası XI (1951); XIII (1953); XV (1955).Google Scholar
Barth, Fredrik. Nomads of South Persia: The Basseri Tribe of the Khamseh Confederacy. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961.Google Scholar
Batatu, Hanna. The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement in Iraq. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Beck, Lois. The Qashqa’i of Iran. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Cora, Yaşar Tolga. “Transforming Erzurum/Karın: The Social and Economic History of a Multiethnic Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2016.Google Scholar
Çelik, Semih. “Scarcity and Misery at the Time of ‘Abundance beyond Imagination’: Climate Change, Famines and Empire-Building in Ottoman Anatolia (c. 1800-1850).” PhD diss., European University Institute, 2017.Google Scholar
Erler, Mehmet Yavuz. “Ankara ve Konya Vilayetlerinde Kuraklık ve Kıtlık (1845 ve 1875 Yılları).” PhD diss., Ondokuz Mayıs University, 1997.Google Scholar
Greenwood, Anthony. “İstanbul’s Meat Provisioning: A Study of the Celepkeşan System.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1988.Google Scholar
Haj, Samira. “The Problems of Tribalism: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Iraqi History.” Social History 16, no. 1 (1991): 45–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kabadayı, M. Erdem. “The Introduction of Merino Sheep Breeding in the Ottoman Empire: Successes and Failures.” In Animals and People in the Ottoman Empire. Edited by Faroqhi, Suraiya. İstanbul: Eren, 2010. 153–169.Google Scholar
Kasaba, Reşat. A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants and Refugees. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Khoury, Philip S. and Kostiner, Joseph, eds. Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Köksal, Yonca. “Coercion and Mediation: Centralization and Sedentarization of Tribes in the Ottoman Empire.” Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 3 (2006): 469–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyberatos, Andreas. “Men of the Sultan: The Beğlik Sheep Tax Collection System and the Rise of a Bulgarian National Bourgeoisie in Nineteenth-century Plovdiv.” Turkish Historical Review 1 (2010): 55–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orhonlu, Cengiz. Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Aşiretlerin İskanı. İstanbul: Eren, 1987.Google Scholar
Pamuk, Şevket. “Institutional Change and the Longevity of the Ottoman Empire, 1500–1800.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35 (2004): 225–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pamuk, Şevket. The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, 1820–1913: Trade, Investment, and Production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Perrot, Georges. “Les Kurdes de l’Haimaneh,” Revue des Deux Mondes (February 1865): 607–631.Google Scholar
Rogan, Eugene L. Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850–1921. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Saylan, Kemal. “Licese Maden Ocağı ve Asia Minor Mining Company’nin Licese’deki Faaliyetleri.” Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi XXIX, no. 2 (2014): 625–643.Google Scholar
Schaebler, Birgit. “State(s) Power and the Druzes: Integration and the Struggle for Social control (1838–1949).” In the Syrian Land: Processes of Integration and Fragmentation. Edited by Philipp, Thomas and Schaebler, Birgit. Berlin: Franz Steiner, 1998. 331–365.Google Scholar
Shaw, Stanford J. “The Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Tax Reforms and Revenue System.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6, no. 4 (1975): 421–459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, Sarah D. “Sheep, Nomads and Merchants in Nineteenth-Century Mosul: Creating Transformations in an Ottoman Society.” Journal of Social History 25, no. 4 (1992): 773–789.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sykes, Mark. “The Kurdish Tribes of the Ottoman Empire.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 38 (1908): 451–486.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tapper, Richard. Pasture and Politics: Economics, Conflict and Ritual among Shahsevan Nomads of Northwestern Iran. London: Academic Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Uzun, Ahmet. İstanbul’un İaşesinde Devletin Rolü: Ondalık Ağnam Uygulaması 1783–1857. Ankara, Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2006.Google Scholar