The Ottoman Empire’s relationship to its provinces is often seen as one of unmitigated exploitation. This view follows from study of its tax registers, but other kinds of records reveal different aspects of Ottoman governance. This paper uses the mühimme registers (records of “important affairs”) to investigate Ottoman governance in Syria after its conquest in 1516 and to discuss some aspects of this transformation that are not very well researched. Focusing on military and fiscal administration, the paper catalogues the issues addressed in the registers and discusses how the Ottoman state dealt with them. It traces relations between the imperial capital and the province, and between the provincial capital and other localities both internal and external to the province, revealing how the state struggled to control its own officials and to negotiate with provincial powers. The province’s main resource was men, and the paper traces the different military groups of Syria and their activities. The fact that some Ottoman soldiers possessed Mamluk names points to a degree of continuity between the two regimes. Taxation is not ignored, but along with tax collection, the paper examines the expenditure of revenue in the province and the problems and solutions involved in fiscal management. Some of these processes also raise the question of continuity, or at least comparability, between Ottoman and Mamluk systems of governance. The paper also addresses the changed relationship between Syria and Egypt, Damascus and Cairo. The sources reflect a separation between the two, as after the conquest each was governed directly from Istanbul, and a shift in the relative status of each province. They also provide some evidence on how this separation and altered status affected the outlook and behavior of officials and subjects. The Ottoman conquest of the Arab lands coincided with the beginning of the early modern period on both shores of the Mediterranean, ushering in a period of state centralization and great power politics. At that moment, Syria was transformed from a frontier province of the Mamluks, their bulwark against the Mongols, to a rather more central province of the Ottoman Empire, a military and commercial crossroads and a center for pilgrimage traffic. At the same time, Egypt changed from an imperial hub to a breadbasket, whose significance was economic but no longer political. Some implications of these changes visible in the mühimme registers will conclude the paper.

This paper traces the professional career of Janbulad Bek b. Qasim (d. ca. 1575), member of a Kurdish chiefly lineage active in northern Syria and grandfather of the more famous ‘Ali Pasha Janbulad (d. 1611), the leader of a major rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. Using both Ottoman Turkish and Arabic sources, the paper will seek to demonstrate that as a state functionary Janbulad occupied an unusual middle ground in the Ottoman political domain, between the relatively centralized timar (land assignment) system, and the more permissive and discretionary arrangements, such as hereditary privileges (ocaklik and hukumet), that were struck with tribal leaders along the empire’s frontiers. Janbulad’s first encounter with Ottoman power typifies the wrenching experience of many local political families coming under Ottoman rule: His father Qasim was executed, probably the result of inter-tribal intrigue, and the young man Janbulad was pardoned and taken into the imperial palace school in Istanbul, where he attained the rank of muteferrika, also common for the sons of vassal lords or high state ministers. In his initial postings, he was absorbed into a centralized administrative system, occupying positions as a timar-holding cavalryman around the town of Shughur, southwest of Aleppo. Janbulad stood out for the zeal and effectiveness with which he reduced brigandage in his area, and he was subsequently favored with major military command positions in the suppression of the 'Ulyanoglu Rebellion of southern Iraq (1567-71), and the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus (1571). Istanbul recognized this outstanding service with a hereditary governorship (ocaklik) of the Kilis district, west of Aleppo, an appointment which had the effect of deepening Janbulad’s local influence. Janbulad subsequently secured timar assignments in the same district for his sons and embarked on an ambitious program of building religious and commercial complexes in the area. As a whole, the political career of Janbulad reflects an Ottoman policy of elite recruitment, characterized by variable set of inducements, whereby chiefly lineages were incorporated into Ottoman state service but not wholly integrated into a system of regular, rotating appointments. This paper thus contributes to an ongoing scholarly reassessment of the sixteenth-century Ottoman state-building that downplays the once-dominant theme of centralization of power and stresses the flexibility and contingency of state political practices. By making use of the law court records of Aleppo, the paper also offers significant new information on the social networks and commercial strategies of Janbulad and his adult sons.

An Ottoman army led by Sultan Selim I entered Damascus in triumph in the year 1516. Not long after, in Ramadan of the hijri year 936 (AD 1530) a member of the Damascene elite and scholar named Badruddin al-Ghazzi set off for the Turkish-speaking lands of the Ottoman Empire, embarking on his own quest for cultural and intellectual conquest. Ghazzi visited several towns and cities in Anatolia before reaching his ultimate destination, Istanbul, or as he repeatedly called it, al-Qustantiniyya al-Uzma (great/much exalted Constantinople). His travelogue, written in the saj‘ style of rhymed prose, represents one of the earliest Arab efforts to describe Ottoman Istanbul, less than a century after its conquest. But it also offers valuable insight into the intellectual life of the city, and gives an early account of Turkish-Arab contact so soon after the Ottoman conquest of the Arab lands. The significance of Badruddin al-Ghazzi as an observer of Ottoman cultural and intellectual life derives from two important facts. Firstly, as a native and resident of Damascus, he was an eyewitness to the Ottomans’ destruction of the Mamluk state and their incorporation of Syria into the Empire. Also significantly, Ghazzi was a member of a long-established family of intellectuals and descended from an extended lineage of Damascene ulema and muftis. As such, he was both part of a population that came into sudden contact with the Ottoman Turks, and an educated-elite commentator on life in the Ottoman-Turkish Empire. His representation of the Empire and its people therefore assumes special import. To suggest that Ghazzi’s work has been understudied would be a great understatement. There is no doubt that it deserves much greater attention than that which it has thus far received. As a remarkably early example of an Arab portrayal of the Ottoman Turks and the lands they inhabited, it represents a valuable account of ethnic relations in the Empire. It can also help determine how the Arab intellectual regarded the role and place of the Turks in the Dar ul-Islam. Thus, giving Ghazzi’s travelogue the attention it deserves can allow us to better understand the complex web of relations that bound Turks and Arabs together for centuries.

Until recently, historians of Ottoman Syria have tended to emphasize the contentious nature of the relationship between the Ottoman regime and its subjects in the Bilad al-Sham. Highlighting Arab criticism of the Ottoman kanun, Arab discontent with Ottoman personnel, and Arab skepticism of the Ottoman commitment to Islam, many historians expressed the view that Syrians were at the best of times lukewarm supporters of the Ottoman regime and at other times a resistant periphery facing an oppressive center. In the past few years however, this rather somber view of Ottoman-Syrian relations has come under scrutiny. Historians of the Bilad al-Sham in the early modern period have increasingly sought a more nuanced understanding of the political attitudes and sensibilities of Syrians and their interactions with the Ottoman regime. My paper examines Damascene attitudes about the Ottoman dynasty by investigating the views of Sultan Kanuni Suleyman that emerge in histories, poems and other texts produced in Damascus from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. The paper will demonstrate that the Damascenes largely shared the Ottoman elite’s reverence for Sultan Suleyman. In an interesting twist, Damascenes’ glowing impressions of Suleyman rarely make reference to his actions in and policy towards the Bilad al-Sham; instead they credit Suleyman with enhancing Ottoman institutions that in turn led to extensive success on the battlefield. In other words, they judge him primarily by imperial rather than local criteria. My conclusion is that while Damascenes may have disapproved of particular Ottoman officials or provisions in the kanun, many were enthusiastic supporters of the dynasty. Proud to be part of a polity that had experienced a leader like Suleyman, some even judged the dynasty—taken as a whole—to be the greatest that the world had ever seen. Although the paper will survey views of Suleyman that appear in published chronicles and biographical dictionaries from these centuries, the paper will rely heavily on unpublished sources that have been little consulted in previous scholarship. They include a treatise on Suleyman by Muhammad ibn Sultan, a comprehensive world history by Ahmad bin Muhammad al-Sumadi, and some unpublished works of ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi. Keeping in mind the question of what audience the authors sought to reach with these works, I will show that it would be a mistake to dismiss their encomia as mere attempts at flattery; rather they are key to understanding the complexities of political culture in the Ottoman provinces.