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Bringing Banat into the Islamic World: The Romanian Peasant and the Bukharan Sufi
Abstract
This paper examines the Ottoman 17th-century incorporation of Ottoman Banat (Romania) into the empire through the Romanian endowments destined for Mecca and Medina. These imperial endowments for the people of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina served as an important tool for both Ottoman authority in the Harameyn/Hijaz and as a way to incorporate new spaces in the empire - such as Ottoman Banat. The paper focuses on the Surre registers funded by the harvests in Romania which then supported the livelihoods of foreign resident pilgrims living in the holy cities. This imperial connection brought together odd pairings such as sufis from Central Asia living in the holy cities finding money in their pockets from revenues of a harvest cultivated by Romanian peasants. In a close examination of the Romanian surre registers for Mecca and Medina the paper navigates questions examining the bounds and binding of imperial space and imagined sovereignty.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Ottoman Empire
Sub Area
13th-18th Centuries