Mediterranean Encounters

Mediterranean Encounters traces the layered history of Galata-a Mediterranean and Black Sea port-to the Ottoman conquest, and its transformation into a hub of European trade and diplomacy as well as a pluralist society of the early modern period. Framing the history of Ottoman-European encounters within the institution of ahdnames (commercial and diplomatic treaties), this thoughtful book offers a critical perspective on the existing scholarship. For too long, the Ottoman empire has been defined as an absolutist military power driven by religious conviction, culturally and politically apart from the rest of Europe, and devoid of a commercial policy. By taking a close look at Galata, Fariba Zarinebaf provides a different approach based on a history of commerce, coexistence, competition, and collaboration through the lens of Ottoman legal records, diplomatic correspondence, and petitions. She shows that this port was just as cosmopolitan and pluralist as any large European port and argues that the Ottoman world was not peripheral to European modernity but very much part of it.

Review: "Zarinebaf's work offers historians and social scientists a refreshing glimpse of how individuals and small social encounters both fuel political economic affairs, and also get swept away by them. . . . [the] book offers important scholarship." * Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa *

"Chapters are each long and detailed, grounded in archival detail, and often threading together several related but distinct topics." * Journal of Interdisciplinary History * 

 List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Note on Transliteration and Translation xvii

Introduction 1

PART ONE

THE URBAN SETTING

1 * A Layered History: From a Genoese Colony to an Ottoman Port 23

2 * The Rise of Pera: From Necropolis to Diplomatic and Commercial Hub 68

PART TWO

THE LEGAL AND DIPLOMATIC SETTING

3 * Ottoman Ahdnames: Their Origins and Development in the Early Modern Period 91

4 * War, Diplomacy, and Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 126

PART THREE

COMMERCIAL AND CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS

5 * Feeding Istanbul: The Merchants of Galata and the Provisioning Trade 153

6 * Between Galata and Marseille: From Silks and Spices to Colonial Sugar and Coffee 185

7 * Sexual and Cultural Encounters in Public and Private Spaces 233

Epilogue: The Unraveling of the French Revolution in Pera 273

Appendix: Archival Documents in English Translation 291

Glossary 297

Notes 303

Bibliography 361