A Neighborhood in Ottoman Istanbul

Fruit Vendors and Civil Servants in the Kasap İlyas Mahalle

By Cem Behar

Subjects: Urban Sociology
Series: SUNY series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East
Paperback : 9780791456828, 236 pages, March 2003
Hardcover : 9780791456811, 236 pages, March 2003
Out of print (Hardcover)

Alternative formats available from:

Read Excerpt View Table of Contents

Request Desk or Examination Copy
Request a Media Review Copy

Table of contents

Preface

INTRODUCTION: THE CITY, THE SEMT, AND THE MAHALLE

The Mahalle and the Semt
The "Islamic City"
The Kasap Ilyas Mahalle
Fluidity and Imprecision
Sources and Issues

1: THE CONTOURS OF A LOCAL IDENTITY

Local Identity: The Formative Sixteenth Century
Mahalle Topography: Boundaries and Landmarks
Houses and Gardens
Streets and Dead Ends
The Population and Inhabitants of a Peripheral Mahalle
Kasap Ilyas' High Street: "Butchers' Road"
Fire and Brimstone

2: POWER AND LOCAL ADMINISTRATION IN KASAP ILYAS: TANZIMAT AND AFTER

The Imam and His Congregation
The Benefits of Local Power: The Case of Aziz Mahmud Efendi
A Case of Peaceful Transition: Imam and Muhtar in Kasap Ilyas
The Administered Body: Early Nineteenth-Century Perspectives

3: MIGRATION AND URBAN INTEGRATION, THE ARAPKIR CONNECTION

The Formation of a Migrant Shelter in Kasap Ilyas: Ispanakci Viranesi and the Arapkirlis
Fruit Vendors and Civil Servants: Provincials and Arapkirlis in 1885
Legal Residence: Regionalism and Nepotism

4: "END OF EMPIRE": PORTRAIT OF A NEIGHBORHOOD COMMUNITY IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Families and Households
Streets, Houses, Warehouses, and Shops: Residential and Commercial Areas in Kasap Ilyas
The Muhtar and his Mahalle: Ruler, Representative, Middleman

EPILOGUE

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Volumes in the SUNY Series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East

A detailed history of a small neighborhood community of Ottoman Istanbul.

Description

Combining the vivid and colorful detail of a micro-history with a wider historical perspective, this groundbreaking study looks at the urban and social history of a small neighborhood community (a mahalle) of Ottoman Istanbul, the Kasap İlyas. Drawing on exceptionally rich historical documentation starting in the early sixteenth century, Cem Behar focuses on how the Kasap İlyas mahalle came to mirror some of the overarching issues of the capital city of the Ottoman Empire. Also considered are other issues central to the historiography of cities, such as rural migration and urban integration of migrants, including avenues for professional integration and the solidarity networks migrants formed, and the role of historical guilds and non-guild labor, the ancestor of the "informal" or "marginal" sector found today in less developed countries.

Cem Behar is Professor of Economics at Boğaziçi University and the author of many books, including (with Alan Duben) Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family, and Fertility, 1880–1940.