During the second half of the nineteenth century, sheep farming became one of the most profitable economic activity for investors, merchants, peasants and nomads of the Ottoman provinces of Erzurum and Van. From these two provinces, great numbers of sheep were exported both to the domestic markets, especially Istanbul, Aleppo, Damascus and Egypt and international markets including Russia and Iran. Sheep, being the most important export item of these two provinces, contributed to the integration of local economy to imperial and inter-imperial markets. From production to trade, it drew different segments of Ottoman society and brought significant profit to those groups. Among all these economic actors, Kurdish nomadic tribes had a significant place, since they were not only owners, but also suppliers of large numbers of sheep to the markets. Based on the Ottoman and British archives, my presentation will discuss how increasing commercialization of sheep farming during the second half of the nineteenth century influenced nomadic tribes, particularly their internal organizations and relations with other tribes and the peasants in the provinces of Erzurum and Van. I will argue that as sheep farming turned into a lucrative economic activity because of the increasing meat demand of urban areas, tribal nomads sought to increase the number of sheep in their flocks, which eventually required large pasturelands. From the 1870s onward, major pasturelands of the provinces of Erzurum and Van became sites of contention among various tribes. Commercialization of sheep farming and the participation of the nomads in this process, not only contributed to the territorialization of the tribes through the “enclosure” of large pasturelands, but also resulted in the stratification of tribal structures. The history of the Kurdish tribes of the Ottoman East has been largely remained as a political history. Tribes not only have been perceived as stable entities in their social and political structures, but also have been conceived and studied in opposition to the central imperial state. This paper, however, aims to present an alternative view. It will not only demonstrate the role of the nomadic tribes in regional, imperial and inter-imperial economies through their engagement in sheep production and its trade, but also discusses the impacts of this process on nomadic tribes, their internal organizations and their relations with other tribes and the peasantry. This presentation is based on research project supported by Boğaziçi University Research Fund Grant Number 17941