Studies on Ottoman Society and Culture, 16th–18th Centuries

Dr Rhoads Murphey is Reader in Ottoman Studies in the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, UK.

• Contents: Preface; Part 1 Cultural Relations and Exchange of Ideas: Ottoman medicine and transculturalism from the 16th through the 18th century; Westernisation in the 18th-century Ottoman empire: how far, how fast?; Bigots or informed observers? A periodization of pre-colonial English and European writing on the Middle East; The Ottoman attitude towards the adoption of Western technology: the role of the efrenci technicians in civil and military applications. Part 2 Urban Living: Provisioning Istanbul: the state and subsistence in the early modern Middle East; Communal living in Ottoman Istanbul: searching for the foundations of an urban tradition; Disaster relief practices in 17th-century Istanbul: a brief overview of organizational aspects of urban renewal projects undertaken in the aftermath of catastrophic fires; The city of Belgrade in the early years of Serbian self-rule and dual administration with the Ottomans: vignettes from Rashid's History illuminating the transformation of a Muslim metropolis of the Balkans. Part 3 Population Groups, Population Movements, Production and Organisation of Labour: Some features of nomadism in the Ottoman empire: a survey based on tribal census and judicial appeal documentation from archives in Istanbul and Damascus; Ottoman census methods in the mid-16th century: 3 case histories; The conceptual and pragmatic uses of the 'summary' (idjmal) register in 16th-century Ottoman administrative practice; Population movements and labor mobility in Balkan contexts: a glance at post-1600 Ottoman social realities; Silver production in Rumelia according to an official Ottoman report circa 1600; Tobacco cultivation in northern Syria and conditions of its marketing and distribution in the late 18th century; The construction of a fortress at Mosul in 1631: a case study of an important facet of Ottoman military expenditure; Index.

'... this work is extremely useful for scholars studying administrative practices as well as economic and societal interactions within the Ottoman Empire. The articles are well written and are arranged to complement each other. it makes this work much more valuable than just the sum of its parts. The use and analysis of primary source documents in all of the articles greatly enhances the value of this work and makes the bibliography and citations of each article extremely valuable for scholars of this period.' Sixteenth Century Journal