BHA Webinar Series (Zoom)
Speaker: Nuray Ocakli (Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University)
Date & Hour: March 26 (Thursday), 15:00 CET / 16:00 EET / 17:00 TRT
Moderator: Farida Seyidova (Khazar University, Baku)
Technical assistance: Timothy French, contact: timothymfrench@yahoo.com
Webinar link
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87135911508
When Constantinople became the new capital of the Ottoman Empire in 1453, it was not the glorious metropolis of the East but an abandoned city. Sultan Mehmed II appointed a new patriarch to encourage the native Christians to return and pursued a policy of forced migration to repopulate the city urgently. The native Christian and forced immigrant communities formed the core of the new imperial society in Istanbul and their tax revenues were allocated to pious foundations, which is the reason that the names and some other important information about the members of the Orthodox Christian community were registered in the 15th- and early 16th-century survey books of Istanbul. These registers are significant sources documenting the origins and profiles of the new members of the Orthodox Christian community of the Ottoman capital who came from Morea, Macedonia, Aegean islands, Karaman, Caffa, and Trebizond and brought their artisanal culture, guild traditions, local identity, saints, musical instruments, songs and more to Istanbul in the second half of the 15th century.
Among the new members of the Orthodox Christian community, names of the householders from Kastoria indicate that craftsmen and merchants from the center of fur manufacturing and silk industry in Western Macedonia came to Istanbul as forced immigrants in the second half of the 15th century, which is long before the golden age of the Kastorian furriers in the Ottoman capital. Moreover, the Orthodox Christian master craftsmen making gold/silver threads and weaving majestic fabrics combining these threads with silk indicate an organized and collective work for manufacturing one of the most valuable commodities in history.
Ottoman sultans and dynasty members wore clothes made of fur covered with majestic fabrics. In addition, the sultans gave these valuable clothes to members of the ruling class and diplomats as gifts to honor them, which institutionalized them as a part of the official ceremonies in Istanbul. For this reason, demand of the Ottoman court for valuable furs and majestic fabrics had increased rapidly since the second half of the 15th century. Due to their high degree of craft specialization, the Orthodox Christian craftsmen became an important part of the manufacturing process of the valuable clothes for the Ottoman court using the three precious materials: Fur, silk, and gold.
This lecture presents the results of a research project conducted on the 15th- and 16th-century survey books of Istanbul and aims to shed light on the early history of the Orthodox Christian craft communities in the Ottoman capital manufacturing and trading valuable furs and majestic fabrics in the late 15th and early 16th century.