Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (17 page)

In the traditional Ottoman land tenure system, the peasant
household was required to pay a tithe to the
sipahi
(the cavalryman
holding a
timar
in return for military service), who acted as the
representative of the central government and resided in the district. Grains “in
the form of tithe collected in kind” represented the “primary source of revenue”
for the
sipahi.
In addition, the peasant household paid the
sipahi
22
akçes
(silver coins) as the annual tax collected from all families
holding a
gift.

The peasant farmer was not allowed to leave the land and
relocate to a different village or town. The
sipahi
did everything in
his power to keep the peasants working on the land, because their flight
reduced his income, as well as the revenue that he was required to send to the
central government. If a peasant farmer fled the land, the
sipahi
had 15
years to compel him to return, but he could not force it without a decree from
a
kadi
or a religious judge. If the peasant farmer settled in a town and
entered a craft, he had to pay the
sipahi
a tax, which was slightly more
than one gold ducat a year.

BUILDING HOMES

In most rural communities, houses were built in close
proximity to one another. The peasant family did not live in the middle of a
large field, but resided inside the village and only went out to the field in
the morning. Living together provided security and protection; it allowed the
community to organize a united front against threats and attacks from outside
forces. Other villagers, particularly one’s neighbors, also cooperated in
building new homes, adding new sections to existing homes, and harvesting
crops.

The material used to build a house was determined by the
environmental setting and the availability of basic supplies. In dry climate regions,
such as central and eastern Anatolia, Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, where wood was
scarce, houses were built of mud brick, which was manufactured by pouring a
solution of wet mud and straw into a wooden form that was then left in place
while the mud partially dried, usually for one day, then removed as the brick
dried completely. The bricks were then left on the ground for another week
before they were used in the construction of the house. Aside from
environmental factors, the cost of building material made mud brick an
attractive material for building homes. Mud brick was made of earth and it was
therefore extremely cheap. Mud brick walls also kept village houses cool during
summer. On the negative side, mud brick easily broke when earthquakes struck the
Anatolian plateau, much of which sat on an earthquake zone. Thus, Ankara,
situated in central Anatolia, was significantly damaged, and numerous small
towns and villages were destroyed in the earthquake of 1668, while another
earthquake in 1688 destroyed Izmir and surrounding rural communities.

A house roof in Anatolia began with poplar poles held
firmly in place by mud brick mortar. Woven reeds were then laid to cover the
poles, followed by a layer of straw or other material that would produce a flat
surface. Onto this surface the villagers poured large quantities of the mud
mortar, followed by a layer of clay soil to repel water. They then stamped the
roof by foot or rolled a cylindrical stone across it to create a hard, flat
surface capable of shedding water and protecting the house from heat.

Peasant families in Anatolia lived in cottages, which
contained very little furniture, except “a scanty supply of bedding and a few
rugs, stools, and cooking utensils.” The “function of today’s wooden furniture
was taken up by the building itself,” with “seats, beds, and storage” built “into
the walls of the house, made of the same brick that formed the walls.” If the
household budget allowed or if the family themselves were weavers, rugs were
used to cover the floors. The walls of some peasant homes featured a divan or
rug and cushioned-covered outcropping that served as both a seat and, if wide
enough, as a bed. More often, however, family members slept on the floor.
Bedding was stored away during the day and only brought out at night.
Mattresses beneath and quilts above provided the sleeper with warmth and
comfort. This form of bedding and sleeping was not confined to the peasant
households in the rural communities of the empire. As late as the second half
of the 19th century, high government officials and their families who lived in
large and spacious homes in the posh neighborhoods of Istanbul also used “Turkish
beds,” which were “laid out every evening on the carpet and gathered up in the
morning and put away.” During winter, peasant families in Anatolian villages
kept warm with fireplaces built into the walls or with
mangals,
braziers
that held hot coals retrieved from the fireplace. Wooden shutters, along with
textiles and animal skins, hung over windows and doors to keep out chill
drafts. For the most part, however, clothing provided much of the warmth
Ottoman villagers enjoyed during the winter months. Household goods consisting
of “one poor cooking-pot, wooden spoon, a drinking cup of leather or wood, and
a poor mattress of just a single coverlet were sufficient, as the ground served
for bedstead, table and stools; nor had the Turks any need of a troop of cooks
and scullions to prepare their meals and wash their dishes, as they ate sour
curds mixed with bread and water, or fresh curds and cheese and in place of
bread they had unleavened cakes baked on cinders.”

In the Balkans and the Black Sea region, where the rate of
rainfall was greater and the supply of trees more plentiful, wood was widely
used in construction of homes. The rainy climate, however, forced villagers to
use “sloped roofs” that “were covered with wood shingles or ceramic tiles.” In
many parts of the Balkans, homes were built of stones collected from the beds
of rivers. In contrast to peasant houses in Anatolia that were one-story high
and a simple structure in which the cattle were also housed, stone houses in
the Balkans were usually “two storied, with a stone bottom floor and a wooden
top floor, with a sloped roof.” 166 The windows were small apertures, high up
in the walls, and were sometimes grated with wood. There were no chimneys, but
in the center of the roof was an opening to disperse the smoke from a fire pit
that burned in the middle of the room. In front of the house was an enclosure,
either of thorns or a mud wall, that secured the privacy of the dwelling. If
they could afford it, the family built an outer chamber, where the head of
household received his visitors and guests.

In Egypt, some of the peasant dwellings comprised two or
more apartments, and a few were even two stories high. In the homes of the
peasants in Lower Egypt, one of these apartments contained an oven at the
farthest point from the entrance, which occupied the whole width of the room. It
resembled “a wide bench or seat,” was “about breast high,” and was “constructed
of brick and mud; the roof arched within, and flat on the top.” The inhabitants
of the house, who seldom had any blankets or quilts during the winter, slept on
the top of the oven, having already lighted a fire within it. At times, only
the husband and wife enjoyed “this luxury,” and the children slept on the
floor. The rooms had “small apertures high up in the walls, for the admission
of light and air, sometimes furnished with a grating of wood.” The roofs of
Egyptian peasant dwellings were made out of “palm branches and palm leaves, or
of millet stalks, laid upon rafters of the trunk of the palm, and covered with
a plaster of mud and chopped straw.” The furniture consisted of several mats to
sleep on and “a few earthen vessels, and a hand-mill to grind the corn.” In
many Egyptian villages, large square pigeon houses were built on the roofs of
peasant huts “with crude brick, pottery, and mud.”

In every Ottoman village, building homes demanded teamwork
and cooperation among all members of the family, regardless of age and gender.
The team often included members of the extended family who lived in the same
village and even neighbors and friends who could lend their labor and
architectural expertise. Villagers who had expertise in building particular
parts of the house, such as roofs, were in especially high demand, and every
effort was made to recruit them for the construction team. While the female
members of the family did not usually participate in producing mud bricks and
installing roofs, they played a central role in manufacturing the goods
essential for household consumption. They wove rugs and carpets, and knitted
new beddings and textile products.

In Anatolia, the majority of villages were built at a fair
distance from the main road, out of fear of traveling armies, bandits, and
antigovernment rebels. Some villages relocated as a direct result of plagues,
ongoing warfare, social instability, economic insecurity, and climate change.
In times of political uncertainty, the absence of governmental authority forced
many to abandon their villages altogether and move to a nearby town or another
region.

The mosque or the church, the coffeehouse or the teahouse,
and the village store were the most important nonresidential buildings and were
usually located in the center of the village. The representatives of the
central government did not live in the village and there were no governmental
buildings. The principal link between the village and the government was through
the village headman, whose most important function was to act as the
representative of his community. The headman was not a full employee of the
village, but rather one of the most respected members of the community who,
like other peasants, worked as a farmer and a herder. Even the barber, who gave
haircuts at the village coffeehouse, set off for the fields soon after he had
finished cutting the hair of his fellow villagers. Outside every rural
community, a small area was designated as the village cemetery.

Family members such as parents, children, uncles, aunts,
cousins, nephews, and nieces, lived in the same village and were relied upon to
help with work in the field. Marriages within the family, and particularly
among cousins, strengthened and consolidated these close-knit social networks.
When they were not in the field, men gathered at the village coffeehouse (or
teahouse) at one another’s houses to discuss the latest news. While doing so
they drank tea or coffee, and played chess or backgammon. Women visited each
other’s homes, where they also partook in refreshments, discussed the latest
happenings in the village, and watched each other’s children. To sell their
agricultural products and to purchase some of the basic goods, which were not
available in the village, peasant farmers traveled to the closest market towns.

A neighborhood on the outskirts
of Istanbul.

AGRICULTURAL INSTRUMENTS AND THE PEASANT
HOUSEHOLD

In their writings, European travelers praised the Ottoman
peasants, and particularly the Turkish peasant in Anatolia, for his “passionate
attachment to land,” resignation to the will of God, loyalty to the sultan,
honesty, sobriety, passive contentment, and cleanliness. Anatolian peasants
wore coarse cloaks (
aba)
, headgears of varying shapes and forms, and
rude sandals on their feet. They began and ended each day with a cup of coffee
or tea and a puff on a tobacco pipe. Into their fields, they led yoked bulls,
oxen, and buffalo decorated with gilt horns and silken saddlecloths and covers.
The most basic means of agricultural production was “a wooden plow pulled by a
pair of oxen.” Since a pair of oxen acted as the tractor of traditional
agriculture, a peasant who lost his animal could become destitute and only be
rescued if the government showed mercy and understanding by providing a “tax
amnesty.”

The instruments of agricultural production and the crops
that were grown in Anatolia during the long reign of the Byzantine Empire did
not change under Ottoman rule. The plow pulled by a pair of oxen or buffalo was
used during cultivation of crops such as wheat, barley, oats, vetch, millet,
and rye. These crops were sown and reaped, utilizing the same methods that had
been used under Byzantine rule. Vegetables and fruits were also grown in small
gardens on the banks of rivers and streams, and on the outskirts of villages
and towns.

The foundation of agricultural production was the peasant
household, which consisted of a man, his wife, and their children. According to
the traditional division of labor in the villages of Anatolia, men were
expected to organize “the ploughing, sowing, and harvesting,” as well as
building homes, going to the market towns, dealing with government officials,
and representing the family in its interactions with other families. All other
functions such as “child rearing, feeding and sustaining the family and tending
the crops and the animals” were “the province of women.” This division of work,
which assigned “a woman’s sphere of control” to “inside of the house” and a
man’s to outside, “made men and women absolutely dependent on each other.” Men “did
not cook or care for babies,” and they needed wives or daughters to care for
them, while women did not deal with the representatives of the government or
transport crops to a market town, and they “needed a husband, brother, or son
to care” for them. The traditional rural family structure was patriarchal, and,
as stated previously, the state recognized the father of the family as the
representative of his household and the principal taxpayer. As the head of his
family, he was also empowered to organize his household as a production unit,
assigning tasks to his sons, both in the field and at the house. The
patriarchal nature of the peasant family was best demonstrated by the fact that
the central government confiscated the land of a woman whose husband had died
and who did not have sons; the state would then transfer it to another peasant
household. If the widow had a son who had not reached the proper age for
working on the field, the state recognized her as the taxpayer under the title
of
hive,
or widow.