Society and Politics in an Ottoman Town: 'Ayntab in the 17th Century.

• Author: Wilkins, Charles L.
• Position: Book review

Society and Politics in an Ottoman Town: 'Ayntab in the 17th Century. By HULYA CANBAKAL. The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage, vol. 36. Leiden: BRILL, 2007. Pp. xvi + 216. $137, 103 [euro].

Among historians, a prevailing assumption about Anatolian towns under Ottoman rule is that they lacked "civic pride, autonomy, and collective identity." The assumption rests largely on the dearth of local sources, especially biographical dictionaries and chronicles. In this concise and well-argued monograph, Canbakal uses other sources, primarily local law court records (kadi sicilleri), to demonstrate that such psychological, social, and institutional elements did exist, at least within a specific constituent group. In her examination, the author carefully builds her arguments to show that the social elite of seventeenth-century 'Ayntab society, while integrated politically into the Ottoman ruling apparatus, nevertheless preserved broad autonomy in matters of administration, and as a quasi-corporate body asserted de facto hegemony over the common folk of the city. Her focus on the medium-sized town of'Ayntab (present-day Gaziantep), with an estimated seventeenth-century population of 14,000, has the additional virtue of providing a fuller picture of the Ottoman provincial world beyond the widely studied major cities of the empire (Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo).

The main text of the book is broken formally into three parts. Part one, comprising chapter one, provides an essential and informative general introduction to 'Ayntab. It situates the town geographically, examines the local physical geography and urban layout, analyzes population with respect to number, ethnicity, and religion, and gives an overview of the major sources of economic wealth and key aspects of administrative structure. The chapter convincingly paints a picture of the town as ordinary and comparable to other medium-sized, non-strategic towns of the "interior" periphery of the empire. That said, Canbakal does not shy away from discussing what was distinctive about 'Ayntab; its location in a frontier zone between the Arab lands ('Arabistan) and Anatolia (RQm), its proximity to the migratory routes of major Turkoman and Kurdish tribes, and the vitality of its economy, based mostly on viticulture and textile production, no doubt helped to shape the town's politics.

Part two, comprising chapters two and three, explores the social and material aspects of Ottomanization, primarily the ways in...