This papers aims to challenge the validity of two major assumptions of the nineteenth century Ottoman economic history from a labor perspective: the abrupt demise of Ottoman urban artisanal production and ethno-religious division of labor within that production. The long prevailed stance in the literature associated the disappearance of Ottoman urban guild production in the nineteenth century closely with the free trade agreements with European powers. According to this dominant view following the 1838 Anglo-Turkish Treaty industrial goods from Great Britain and other European countries acquired an unprecedented, broad and facilitated access to the Ottoman domestic market via lower customs duties and these out-competed more expensive guild controlled Ottoman urban artisanal production. The second assumption, ethno-religious division of labor, presupposes that ethnic and religious affiliation of Ottoman subjects were decisive factors in choosing or finding employment for the trades they were working in. Based upon this assumption spatial organization of urban guild production has also been envisaged as segregated along ethno-religious lines, which meant neighborhoods build upon artisanal division of labor. The main source of this paper is an Ottoman census, Temettuat: Registers of Income Yielding Assets, which is extraordinary in the quantity and quality of the data it provides. This census covers almost all of the Ottoman territories in 1845 and provides detailed information on income sources on household basis both for urban and rural population. The specific source material of this study is a databank extracted from this census with entries on ethno-religious affiliation, occupation, occupational income and total income of households’ heads. I will utilize one subset of this data, covering urban centers, Ankara, Bursa, Edirne and Salonika, which had around 5000 households and ethnically and religiously diverse populations in mid-nineteenth century. In addition to assess the demise argument of urban artisanal production and ethnic division of labor hypothesis, the nature of the available data can allow to pose the following analytical research questions regarding the labor relations and their outcomes: To what extent did existing spatial organization of artisanal production determined the urban fabric of chosen cities? What were the major determinants of different income levels in same trades compared between cities? Taking into consideration the income level differences of masters, assistant masters and apprentices in same trades in same locations what can be the major determinants of hierarchies within and patterns of promotion of guild production?