1. Tin Polein/Istanbul is, etymologically, the city. Similarly, Cairo is still today often called umm’ad-dunia (mother of the world), and the glorious Isfahan was celebrated in rhyme, as Isfahan/Nisf-jihan (Isfahan/half the world).
2. In many Ottoman biographical dictionaries, only those born within the triangular walled inner city of Istanbul were ever granted the posthumous honor of being qualified as urban (œehrî). See, for instance, Mehmed Süreyya Sicill-i Osmani, yahud Tezkire-i Meœâhir-i Osmaniye, ƒstanbul, Matbaa-yı Amire, 1890–1899. Even those born in the nearby boroughs of Istanbul were considered slightly “provincial.”
3. For a large collection of Ottoman demographic data and various population estimates for Ottoman and early republican Istanbul, see Cem Behar Osmanlı ƒmparatorlu™unun ve Istanbul’un nüfusu (1500–1927) (The population of the Ottoman Empire and of Istanbul (1500–1927), Ankara, Turkey, State Institute of Statistics (Historical Statistics Series, Vol. 2), 1996.
4. See Alan Duben and Behar ƒstanbul Households—Marriage, Family and Fertility, 1880–1940, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 30.
5. Suraiya Faroqhi’s work on Ankara and Kayseri in the seventeenth century, and André Raymond’s books on Arab cities in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries are a case in point.
6. A semt is, etymologically, a “direction,” a “location,” or an “address.”
7. See Helene Desmet-Grégoire and François Georgeon (eds.) Cafés d’Orient Revisités, Paris, CNRS Editions, 1997.
8. For a recent instance, see Edhem Eldem “Istanbul. From Imperial to Peripheralized Capital,” in Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffmann, and Bruce Masters The Ottoman City Between East and West—Aleppo, Izmir and Istanbul, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999, 135–206.
9. For a solid and detailed exposition of the canonical model of the “Islamic city” and of its various offshoots, see “Introduction: Was There an Ottoman City?” in ibid., pp. 1–18. A scathing deconstruction of the idea of the Islamic city is provided by Janet L. Abu-Lughod in “The Islamic City—Historic Myth, Islamic Essence and Contemporary Relevance,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies,
19, 1987, pp. 155–176.
10. S. M. Stern “The Constitution of the Islamic City,” in A. H. Hourani and Stern The Islamic City—A Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970, pp. 25–50.
11. Gustav E. von Grunebaum “The Structure of the Muslim Town,” in Islam—Essays in the Nature and the Growth of a Cultural Tradition, Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 1961, pp. 141–159.
12. See, for instance, William Marçais “L’Islamisme et la vie urbaine,” Comptes—rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres,” Paris, January 1928, pp. 86–100. Georges Marçais “La Conception des Villes dans l’Islam,” Revue d’Alger, 2, 1945, pp. 517–533.
13. Ira M. Lapidus Middle Eastern Cities, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1969; Lapidus “The Evolution of Muslim Urban Society,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 15, 1973, pp. 21–50.
14. Lapidus “Evolution of Muslim Urban Society,” p. 48.
15. For Ottoman crafts and guilds, the best review and summary of the literature is in Halil Inalcık and Donald Quataert (eds.) An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire (1300–1914), Cambridge, 1994.
16. The first of these kadı injunctions dates from as early as November 1578. See Ahmet Refik Altınay Onaltıncı Asırda Istanbul Hayatı, Istanbul, 1935, pp. 144–145.
17. Ömer Lütfi Barkan and Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi Istanbul Vakıfları Tahrir Defteri—953 (1546), ƒstanbul, ƒstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1970.
18. Ibid.
19. Ayverdi Ondokuzuncu Asırda Istanbul Haritası (A map of Istanbul in the nineteenth century), ƒstanbul, ƒstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1978.
20. Cem Behar “Fruit Vendors and Civil Servants—A Social and Demographic Portrait of a Neighborhood Community in Intra-mural Istanbul: the Kasap ƒlyas Mahalle in 1885,” Bo™aziçi Journal, 11/1–2, 1997, pp. 5–32.
21. For a very thorough discussion of the historiography and the basic problematics of mahalle formation, definition, and composition in early Ottoman Istanbul, see Çi™dem Kafesçio™lu The Ottoman Capital in the Making: The Reconstruction of Constantinople in the Fifteenth Century, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Harvard University, 1996, especially pp. 284 et seq.
22. Barkan and Ayverdi Istanbul Vakıfları Tahrir Defteri.
23. Ayvansarayî Hafız Hüseyin Hadikatü’l-Cevâmi, Istanbul, Matba’a-yı Amire, 1281(1865).
24. Esâmi’-i Mahallât, in Mebusların Suret-i ƒntihabına dair Beyannamedir, Istanbul, Matba’a-yı Amire, 1877; Mahallât Esamisi, Istanbul, Arœak Garoyan Matbaası, 1913; Istanbul ve Bilâd-ı selâsede kâin mahallât ve kurrânın hurûf-u hecâ tertibiyle esâmi. . . . Istanbul, Matba’a-yı Amire, 1922. Kasap ƒlyas mahalle, however, appears in all of these lists and there is no solid evidence for thinking that its approximate borders have changed to a considerable degree over time.
25. For a thorough listing of the various fires and other natural catastrophies that plagued Ottoman Istanbul, see Mustafa Cezar Osmanlı Devrinde Istanbul Yapılarında Tahribat Yapan Yangınlar ve Tabii Afetler, Istanbul, Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi, 1963. New street-grids appeared after many of the nineteenth-century fires. See Zeynep Çelik The Remaking of Istanbul—A Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Cen- tury, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1986.
26. A han was a “trade center,” in most cases a rectangular one- or two-story structure with a central courtyard and a number of shops or warehouses around it.
27. For the details on Servi Mescidi and on the court case involved, see Osman Nuri Ergin Mecelle-i Umûr-ı Belediye, Istanbul, 1995, Vol. 7, pp. 3689–3690; for the eventual disappearance of the Servi Mescidi mahalle, see also Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi Fatih Devri sonlarında ƒstanbul mahalleleri, ¥ehrin iskânı ve nüfusu, Ankara, Vakıflar Umum Müdürlü™ü, 1958.
28. A defterdar was a bookkeeper as well as a tax assessor for the public treasury.
29. The avârız tax was a tax collected in Ottoman urban centers at irregular intervals on special occasions when the treasury was in dire need of funds. The lumpsum tax was apportioned essentially on a geographic basis.
30. Ayvansarayî Hâfız Hüseyin Hadikat’ül- Cevâmi’, Istanbul, Matbaa-yı Amire, 1281 (1865).
31. Reœat Ekrem Koçu ƒstanbul Ansiklopedisi, Istanbul, 1966, Vol. 8, pp. 4289–4314 (articles on Davud Paœa).
32. See Cem Behar “Kasap ƒlyas Mahallesi, Istanbul’un bir Mahallesinin sosyal ve demografik portresi: 1546–1885,” Istanbul Araœtırmaları, 4, Winter 1998, p. 27.
33. See Suraiya Faroqhi Men of Modest Substance—House Owners and House Property in Seventeenth Century Ankara and Kayseri, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
34. Behar “Fruit Vendors and Civil Servants.
35. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century examples of a mahalle embedded in another mahalle do exist. See Ayverdi Fatih Devri Sonlarında Istanbul Mahalleleri.
36. See Heath Lowry “The Ottoman Tahrir Defterleri as a Source for Social and Economic History: Pitfalls and Limitations,” Türkische Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte von 1071 bis 1920, Wiesbaden, Germany, 1995, pp. 183–196. These defters are of good informational value as far as agricultural output and trade, and the relationship of Anatolian towns with their hinterland are concerned. For a good discussion of the problems involved in using exclusively Tapu-tahrir defters see also Amy Singer Palestinian Peasants and Ottoman Officials: Rural Administration Around Sixteenth Century,
Jerusalem, Cambridge, 1994.
37. For a detailed survey of the history and the methodology of these late Ottoman censuses and on the rich informative content of the original census documents, see Cem Behar “The 1300 (1885) and 1322 (1907) Tahrirs as Sources for Ottoman Historical Demography,” Bo™aziçi University Research Papers, Istanbul, 1985; Behar “Sources pour la Démographie historique de l’Empire Ottoman—Les Tahrirs (Dénombrements) de 1885 et 1907,” Population, Paris, 1/2, 1998, pp. 161–178; see also Behar “Qui
Compte?—Recensements et Statistiques Démographiques dans l’Empire Ottoman, du XVIe au Xxe siècles,” Histoire et Mesure, 13-1/2, 1998, pp. 135–146.
38. The personal and household information in the main rosters of these two censuses (the so-called Esas Defters) were used for the first time by Alan Duben and Cem Behar in ƒstanbul Households—Marriage, Family and Fertility 1880–1940, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991. Previously, historians who had used these census documents had based their conclusions almost exclusively on the district and provincial totals.
39. For a detailed and nuanced survey and evaluation of the very few available Ottoman first-person narrative texts (a small number of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century personal diaries, some personal account books, a couple of dream-logs, some private personal letters, a few autobiographical sketches, etc.), see Cemal Kafadar “Self and Others: The Diary of a Dervish in Seventeenth Century Istanbul and FirstPerson Narratives in Ottoman Literature,” Studia Islamica, 69, 1989, pp. 121–150.