Sources and Issues
What is known of the demographic structures and the social relationships within the capital-city of the Ottoman Empire, especially in…
What is known of the demographic structures and the social relationships within the capital-city of the Ottoman Empire, especially in…
The Bekir Paœa mescit, as a building, had stood the test of time for about two and a half centuries. However, at no point in time had it succeeded in giving its name to a neighborhood independent from the Kasap ƒlyas mahalle from which it was supposed to have emerged. Was the congregation of the small seaside mosque too small or too poor and/or was the initial endowment and incomes of the waqf insufficient for the upkeep of an imam? Why didn’t the “new” neighborhood expand beyond its initial area? Why didn’t it annex new groups of streets and people?
At no period in the history of Istanbul can the number of mahalles within the walled city be taken as…
Kasap ƒlyas (“Butcher ƒlyas”) mahalle is a smallish neighborhood in southcentral intramural Istanbul, bordering on the sea of Marmara and…
It is also usually understood, in the context of the same paradigm, that the guilds in Islamic cities did not…
Social and urban historians of Istanbul have often stressed the idea that these mahalles, however diverse they may have been,…