by Mehrdad Kia
Guilds were organized principally to manufacture consumer goods in demand by the population, regulate prices and competition, and facilitate the relationship between various trades and the government. Additionally, guilds provided assistance “to craftsmen to open shops, gave money to the sick, and took on the costs of burial if a member died.” They also “paid the wage of guards and firemen, gave alms to beggars in the bazaars, and made sure that the master craftsmen gave proper training to their apprentices, for only by qualifying as masters could the latter open a workshop of their own.”
The Ottoman central government frequently intervened in the daily affairs of the guilds. The state “dominated both production and distribution, determining even the range of profits permitted to a craftsman.” With participation and support of guild masters, Ottoman state officials fixed the number of guilds in every city and disallowed the establishment of new shops and workplaces. The guilds were not organized to produce for “a continuously expanding market,” and they could not enrich themselves at the expense of the consumer. They manufactured primarily for the population of their city and its neighboring towns and villages, and every effort was made by state officials to protect “both the consumer and the producer” by keeping “the consumption and production balanced.”
Given “the weakness of the urban police force,” the Ottoman central government also “used the guilds as a means of controlling the urban population.” In addition, the guilds procured services needed by the army and navy, and secured payment of taxes and dues. A significant number of craftsmen were drafted into military campaigns. This was done because “to supply the soldiers with boots, coats and tents; the necessary investments had to be made by the relevant guilds.” Some guilds, such as those of rowers, oarsmen, waterfront workers, and boatmen who “linked Uskudar, Galata, and the Bosphorus villages to Istanbul,” were recruited by the Ottoman navy to work at the dockyards.
The daily activities of urban guilds were inextricably linked to the surrounding villages and rural communities, which supplied the craftsmen with such raw materials as wool, hides, cotton, grain, and other goods. At times, the urban manufacturers purchased these basic materials from peasant farmers. In return, on rare occasions, peasants from nearby villages came to the town’s craftsmen to purchase the textiles they used for new clothes at weddings and other important ceremonies. These direct commercial exchanges between the urban guilds and rural communities were rare, however, because peasants “produced most of the goods they needed at home, while many artisans bought through their guilds and/or from tax-farmers, and thus did not do their purchasing directly from villages.” In the majority of cases, peasants did not earn sufficient cash to buy finished goods from urban craftsmen. The little cash they earned was paid as tax to government officials. The artisans, on the other hand, did not produce to serve the needs of peasant farmers. Their principal customers were the members of the ruling elite, the merchants, and other craftsmen.
Each guild “had a fixed number of members, and if one died, his place went to his son, or a travelling trader would buy the tools and wares of the deceased, and the money would go to his family.” Every guild was distinguished by its own internal structure, code of conduct, and attire. Ottoman guilds were inherently hierarchical, and each possessed its own organization. Customarily, however, its members were divided into the three grades of masters, journeymen, and apprentices. A very old and well-established conduct code obligated the journeymen to treat their masters with utmost respect and obedience, while the apprentices were expected to display reverence and deference to both the journeymen and masters. Within the guild hierarchy, the apprentices constituted the lowest category. Each apprentice had two comrades; one master teacher; and one pir, or the leader of his order. The apprentice learned his craft and trade under the close supervision of a master. Members of each guild also met at derviş lodges where the masters of the trade taught the apprentices the ethical values and standards of the organization. After several years of hard work, when it was decided that the apprentice was qualified in his craft, a public ceremony was organized where he received an apron from his master. The apron-passing ceremony involved festivities and performances: orators recited poems, singers sang, and dancers danced, while jugglers, rope-dancers, sword swallowers, conjurers, and acrobats performed and showed off their skills.
The kethüda, or the senior officer and spokesperson of the guild, collected taxes for the state and represented his craft in all dealings and negotiations with the central government. Moreover, each guild had a şeyh who acted as the spiritual and religious head of the craft guild. Among Ottoman guilds, competition and profiteering were viewed as dishonorable. Those who attracted customers by praising and promoting their products, and worked primarily to accumulate money, were expelled from the guild. The craftsman was respected for the beauty and artistic quality of his work and not his ability to market his products and maximize his profit. Not surprisingly, traders did not display signs and advertisements to draw the attention of buyers to their business. They merely displayed the pieces and products, which the buyer requested, and did not bargain over the price.
An important characteristic of the Ottoman guild system was the highly specialized nature of every branch of craft and industry. There were no shops that sold a variety of goods. If one needed to purchase a pair of shoes, he would go to the shoemaker section of the bazaar, and if his wife needed a new saucepan, kettle, or coffeepot, she sent her husband or servant to the street where the coppersmiths were located.
Metal workers in a factory in Izmir.
IHTISAB AND MUHTASIB
All Ottoman guilds abided by the traditional rules, which had been set down in the manuals of the semireligious fraternities (futuwwa), guild certificates, and various imperial edicts (fermans). Specific laws and regulations (ihtisab) governed public morals and commercial transactions. All guilds were obligated to follow and respect these rules, which included the right to fix prices and set standards for evaluating the quality of goods that would be sold by tradesmen. Negotiations between the representatives of the central government and the guild masters determined the prices of goods and the criteria for judging the quality of a product. The state involved itself in this process to ensure the collection of taxes from each guild and to support the enforcement of the ihtisab laws and regulations.
A market inspector, or a muhtasib, and his officers were responsible for enforcing public morals and the established rules. Strolling purposefully through the markets, they apprehended violators and brought them to face the local kadi (religious judge). They enforced the sentence handed down from the kadi by flogging or fining the violators. According to Islamic traditions and practices, the muhtasib dealt primarily with “matters connected with defective weights and measures, fraudulent sales and non-payment of debts.” Commercial knavery “was especially within his [the muhtasib’s] jurisdiction, and in the markets he had supervision over all traders and artisans.” In addition to his police duties, he also performed the duties of a magistrate. He could try cases summarily only if the truth was not in doubt. As soon as a case involved claims and counterclaims and “the evidence had to be sifted and oaths to be administered,” disputes were referred to the kadi. The muhtasib was also the official responsible for stamping certain materials, “such as timber, tile or cloth, according to their standard and [he] prohibited the sale of unstamped materials.”
A European observer who visited the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 17th century described one form of punishment applied by the muhtasib: “Sometimes a cheat is made to carry around a thick plank with a hole cut in the middle, so his head can go through it . . . Whenever he wants to rest, he has to pay out a few aspers [silver coins]. At the front and back of the plank hang cowbells, so that he can be heard from a distance. On top of it lies a sample of the goods with which he has tried to cheat his customers. And as a supposedly special form of mockery, he is made to wear a German hat.” As the offic
ial responsible for the maintenance and preservation of public morals, the muhtasib had to ensure that men did not consort with women in public, and it was his duty to identify and punish bad behavior, particularly stealing, drunkenness, and wine drinking in public. A thief who was caught red-handed would be nailed by his ears and feet to the open shutter of the shop he had tried to rob. He was left in the same state for two days without food or water. The muhtasib could take action against violations and offenses only if they had been committed in public. He did not have the right to enter a house and violate the privacy of a family.
BATHHOUSES
A “key resource of any Muslim city was its public baths.” A “city was not considered to be a proper city by Muslim travelers in the pre-modern period unless it had a mosque, a market, and a bathhouse.” Most “Ottoman cities had a public bathhouse in every neighborhood,” which “provided not only an opportunity for cleanliness but also a public space for relaxation and entertainment.” This was “especially true for women, as men were allowed to socialize in the coffee houses and public markets.”
As early as the 14th century, the North African traveler Ibn Battuta observed that in Bursa, the Ottoman ruler Orhan had built two bathhouses, “one for men and the other for women,” which were fed by a river of “exceedingly hot water.” At bathhouses, or hammams, men had their “beards trimmed or their hair cut,” while women “had their skin scrubbed, their feet briskly massaged, and the whites and yolks of eggs . . . pressed around their eyes to try to erase any wrinkles.” In its “steam-filled rooms and private suites, young masseurs pummeled and oiled their clients as they stretched out on the hot stones.”
With the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottomans introduced their public baths to the peoples they had conquered. Hammams that received their water from aqueducts were constructed in many towns. Some of these baths were attached to the bazaars, where merchants, artisans, and shopkeepers were attended by serving-boys. Salonika’s Bey Hammam, where visitors could still wash themselves until the 1960s, is one of the outstanding examples of early Ottoman culture and architecture.
Having recognized the benefits of cleanliness and to avoid a needless trip to a public bath, the rich and the powerful built their own private baths at home. Many “families allowed their relatives and retainers to use” their private hammam, eliminating any need to use public baths. Despite this development, the public baths remained popular among the masses who could not afford building their own private bathhouse.
Regardless of its size, every public bathhouse consisted of three sections: “the outer hall, in which bathing dress” was arranged; “the cooling room, a well-cushioned and comfortable space, moderately heated and intended for the temporary reception of the bathers”; and “the bath itself, where the atmosphere” was “laden with sulfuric vapor.” The public baths were open from eight in the morning to sunset with “men and women frequenting them on alternate days.” In “many neighborhoods, there were separate bathhouses for women.” For women, the bathhouse served as the best place to meet and “discuss every subject of interest and amusement, whether politics, scandal, or news; to arrange marriages and to prevent them, to ask and to offer advice, to display their domestic supremacy, and to impart their domestic grievances but above all to enjoy the noise, the hurry, and excitement,” which stood in sharp contrast to “the calm and monotony of the harem.” Social custom strictly prohibited women from patronizing coffeehouses and other venues available to men. For women, the bathhouse became an escape from ordinary routine and offered a space to socialize with friends while drinking coffee and being entertained by female performers. Men “used the baths for many of the same reasons as women, but unlike visits to coffeehouses, there was no hint of impropriety for those who went to the baths to socialize.”
Before leaving the reception room and entering the main bath, a large octagon hall with several fountains and numerous small cabinets, the bather was supplied with a pair of wooden sandals, “raised several inches from the floor.” Among the upper classes, these sandals were “objects of great cost and luxury, the band by which” they were “secured across the instep being frequently inlaid with jewels.” Once in the main hall, the bathers gathered around the fountains that were supplied with both hot and cold water. In case of women from wealthy families, each lady was attended by her servants and slaves, “naked from waist upwards,” who poured water over the head and body of their matron from a metal basin and gently combed her hair and rubbed her limbs “by a hand covered with a small glove, or rather bag, woven of camel’s hair.” Once the washing, combing, scrubbing, and massaging had been completed, the female bather changed “her dripping garments for others” that awaited her near the door of the hall and passed into the cooling room. Here, “reclining on mats and carpets,” bathers rested for a long time “with their hair concealed beneath heavy” towels and their bodies “wrapped closely in long white” robes. Once they finally ventured back into the reception hall, they lay on sofas where an attendant scattered perfumed water over their face and hands and folded them in warm clothes. As the bather sank “into a luxurious slumber beneath a coverlet of satin,” servants and slaves served them sweetmeat, sherbet, and other plates of food.
Cooling room of a hammam. William H. Bartlett. From Julie Pardoe, The Beauties of the Bosphorus (London: 1839).
Khammam, 1812, inside an Ottoman hammam (bath) for women. Antoine L. Castellan.
HANS
Khan or han, “a word of Persian origin” designated “on the one hand a staging-post and lodging on the main communication routes, on the other a warehouse, later a hostelry in the more important urban centers.” The highway han offered safe lodging and protection for travelers and their possessions in regions where nomads and roaming bandits threatened security. The han provided services indispensable for safe and successful overland commerce and was essential in regions where food and water remained elusive.
While the highway han was “a staging-post and a relay-station,” the urban han lay “at the end of a journey;” it was “a depot, a place for commercial transaction and brief stay.” Aside from public baths and coffeehouses, the urban hans provided open and free space for social interaction between a variety of people from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds. Muslims, Christians, and Jews; travelers, pilgrims, Sufi wanderers, merchants, and traders from various Ottoman provinces and distant lands, such as Central Asia, India, Iran, and North Africa; all converged at these inns where they interacted without interference from any governmental or religious authority.
Whether built along the main roads or in the midst of cities, most hans and caravanserais were similarly designed. Invariably “built of stone, they consisted of a two-story rectangle or square built around an open courtyard in which there was a fountain.” 126 Many also “had a small mosque in the corner of the structure facing Mecca.” A 17th-century French priest Robert de Dreux described the Ottoman hans as large buildings (as large as European churches), built by sultans “to lodge travelers, without care for their station in life or religion, each one being made welcome, without being obliged to pay anything in return.” Another European visitor wrote that hans were large quadrangular courts “surrounded by stone buildings, solidly massed, and presenting much the appearance of the inner cloisters of a monastery.”
Through a high arched doorway that remained chained, the traveler entered the han, a quadrangle structure with a fountain in the middle and surrounding stables for horses and camels, as well as storehouses for the goods transported by caravans, and hearths and fires for the convenience of visitors. Storage rooms on the ground floor allowed merchants to store their goods and stable their animals, while themselves occupying apartments on the han’s upper floor. The apartments on the lower floor included “counting-houses for the merchants” and a coffeehouse.
The upper story of the han was “faced by an open gallery, supported on arches” that stretched “round the entire square,” and was “reached by exteri
or flights of stone steps, situated at two of its angles; and from this gallery” opened “the store-rooms of the merchants,” which in the first half of the 19th century, were “generally filled with bags of raw silk, European cottons, bales of rich stuffs, tobacco, spices, arms—and in short, all the most precious articles of Eastern traffic.” The articles mentioned here were not found in every han; to the contrary, in the large urban centers of the empire such as Istanbul, “the silk merchants” had “their own peculiar rendezvous”; the Persians piled “their gold and silver stuffs apart”; and the tobacco dealers sorted “their various tobaccos in a caravanserai of their own; while the mere traveler, pilgrim, and dervish” took up “their abode in common in very inferior” hans.
Hans were “closed two hours before midnight by a pair of massive gates; beside one of which stood the little hut” that served as the residence for the han keeper, or the hanci, who was “answerable for all comers and goers after that time, until day-break; a precaution rendered highly necessary by the immense value of the merchandise” that was “frequently contained in these establishments.” The hancis were “universally patient and good humored” men, “the very focus of all the news and gossip of the city.” Witty, “crafty, and intelligent,” they were entrusted with protection of a large volume of precious goods, which had been brought to them by merchants who believed that their goods would never be violated once they were placed in charge of the hanci, “who will die at his post rather than suffer even a suspicious eye to rest upon them.”
