This paper explores a new reading of imperial orders about payment systems at Ottoman post stations. Although these imperial orders (ḥükm) are well known to Ottoman historians studying the postal system and have been regularly cited, this paper re-examines these sources and offers a new interpretation. It makes several new points: it identifies the different actors who made cost decisions in the Immediate (Cash) payment system (peşīn), and in the Deferred Payment system. In the former, bookkeepers based in the imperial capital with imprecise knowledge of routes, distances, and travel conditions made cost projections based on certain assumptions; in the latter, autonomous couriers who decided their itineraries and changed them according to circumstance incurred costs through a fee waiver scheme. Ultimately, due to coin shortages, the Immediate Cash Payment system led to a liquidity crunch that prompted bureaucrats to recommend a return to the Deferred Payment system. This paper takes a step back to reflect on how political economy can function as a hermeneutical tool to help historians to reach new understandings of old archival sources.

This presentation will discuss how contemporary (mis)conceptions of finance, money and economics influence historical readings of Ottoman revolts. It will focus on the general understanding of inflation in Ottoman scholarship, and revisit some of the assumptions related to debasement (tağşiş) and inflation. Academics tend to establish a clear connection between the two monetary events. Many link social turmoil to these as well, such that debasement is often associated with upheavals. But is there a correlation or causality between these phenomena? This direct link between debasement and societal instability will be called into question to carve out space for alternative explanations of revolts and monetary events. The presentation will adopt a broad temporal scope, discussing events at a macro-level between the late 16th and 18th centuries.

Hezarfenn Hüseyin’s Telhisü’l-Beyan fi Kavanin-i Al-i Osman has traditionally been used for two distinct purposes by historians – as a budget and as a text on governmental organization – that have never been united in a single interpretive framework. The Telhis is a rare specimen of a state budget from the period. Secondly, it gives us valuable information about what exactly the Ottoman state was. These two elements are, from Hezarfenn’s perspective, clearly inseperable. Even the word kavanin, often used in its legal sense by historians, here means something more akin to a formal budget. The Telhis is, in other words, a political economic text. In this talk, I’ll highlight several passages that showcase how economy and politics relate to one another in Hezarfenn’s mind.