A Pilgrimage as Social Network: The Case of Evliya Çelebi's Hajj of 1672
‘And when I heard a description of the seven climes and the four corners of the earth, I longed to travel with all my heart and soul. So I became utterly wretched, a vagabond crying out, “Might I roam the world? Might it be vouchsafed to me to reach the Holy Land, Cairo and Damascus, Mecca and Medina, and to rub my face at the Sacred Garden, the tomb of the Prophet, glory of the universe?”’
Evliya Çelebi, 1631 (Volume 1: Istanbul)
Figure 1: The Ottoman Empire
Introduction
Evliya Çelebi (1611-c.1684) was a member of a well-established Turkish family in Istanbul with ties to the Ottoman court. However, he never aspired to hold an official government position since the only thing he wished for was to become a world traveler. He travelled the Ottoman empire and beyond and distinguished himself by writing a ten-volume detailed account of his travels, known as the Seyahatname or the Book of Travels. When he completed the final redaction of his work in the late 1670’s, he had written what would be the longest travelogue in the history of the world. This work provides historians with a great source on the seventeenth century Ottoman world and has turned Çelebi in one of the best known Ottoman travelers from the early modern period. From all his extensive travels, I have chosen to focus on volume IX, The Pilgrimage, which consists of his journey through the Middle East with the intent to perform the Muslim pilgrimage, or the Hajj.
The Hajj never was just a religious but also a political, economic and social phenomenon. From the thirteenth century onwards, the Islamic political ruler who controlled the Hejaz, the western part of the Arabian peninsula, served as the 'Servant of the Two Holy Sanctuaries', meaning Mecca and Medina. He was obliged to safeguard the pilgrims against potential Bedouin attacks along the route to and from Mecca. To protect these thousands of pilgrims each year pilgrimage caravans were formed, of which the two most important ones were the Cairo and Damascus caravans.
Economically, the Hajj was very attractive for the Arab Bedouin communities, the local inhabitant of the Hejaz and the merchants to supply the caravans with camels, food and other goods. In the seventeenth century, a time in which the global trade expanded between Europe, the Middle East and Asia, we find that these caravans were well-integrated within this global market. The Hajj was a social phenomenon because it attracted Muslims from all over the Islamic world. They travelled together in one of the caravans, prayed together, traded goods, fought with each other, had to deal with the same conditions and exchanged their experiences.
In order to arrive in Mecca before April, the pilgrimage month of 1672, Çelebi joined the Damascus caravan, which was headed by the governor of Damascus, Hüsayn Pasha. This caravan can be approached form a social network theory perspective because we find a lot of patterns of interconnected relationships between the different social actors. They were all interdependent on each other, whether for security, supplies or livelyhood, and by exploring this interdepency we can define the political, economic and social structures of the Hajj.
The Source
The primary source that served as the basis for unraveling the social network of the Damascus caravan of 1672 is Evliya Çelebi’s volume IX: The Pilgrimage of his Book of Travels. Since I don’t read early modern Ottoman Turkish, the English translation has been used in Robert Dankoff and Sooyong Kim’s An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliya Çelebi. The problem is however that it does not contain a translation of the full account. Thus, in addition secondary literature, based on the more extensive original Turkish source, has been used.
Çelebi’s motivation to write his Book of Travels is best expressed by a quote from himself. In volume IX, he writes:
“Because we humans are creatures of forgetfulness, lest their traces be effaced and their names be concealed, I began to make a record of noteworthy items – both man-made and God-made (i.e., naturally occurring) – and to write them down in order to provide memory clues, using well-worn expressions and a middling style, in accordance with the dictum, Talk to people according to the measure of their intellect.”
Çelebi’s ‘memory clues’ resulted mainly in a description of the cities and the people he encountered but we not always that accurate. So we must keep in mind that Çelebi was very subjective. First of all because he recorded only what he considered to be ‘noteworthy’ and according to Suraiya Faroqhi with the underlying intention to ‘exalt the glory of the Ottoman empire’. But, and more importantly, he was, as a member of the Ottoman elite, very close to the Ottomans bureaucracy of the Damascus caravan, and thus reflected their official point of view. This means that he did not made any attempt to understand the perspective of, for example, the Arab Bedouin communities.
Furthermore, the quote provides an indication of his intended audience. It seems that he intended to reach an average educated audience by using certain common expressions and an accessible style. Hatice Aynur confirms this by placing Çelebi in the orta category, one of the three categories put forward by Fahir İz to divide Ottoman prose. This orta category includes prose in which the author is more concerned with the content than with demonstrating his literary skills. This kind of prose is known as ‘popular Ottoman’ and was intended for literate townspeople.
Despite this intended audience, it is true that before the end of the nineteenth century very few people had ever read the Book of Travels. After his death it ended up in the private collection of his Egyptian patron, Özbek Bey, was only brought to Istanbul in 1742, and it would last more than a century before it ultimately was printed. It is therefore that Caroline Finkel argues that Çelebi’s real audience was rather the Ottoman elite, those people who actually read his accounts and who ascribed a high status to travelers because of the news they brought back. It was also this same Ottoman elite that encouraged, employed and patronized Çelebi, so whenever he returned from a journey, he found in these circles a particular interest in his adventures. This is underpinned by the various warnings about certain situations and places we find in Çelebi’s work. In relation to the Hajj he noted the various prayers that pilgrims needed to recite on certain moments. Together with the warnings this is according to most scholars a result of his desire to gave his accounts a practical purpose.
The question that remains is whether Çelebi’s volume IX: The Pilgrimage is a reliable source to explore the social network of the Damascus caravan of 1672. There exist a consensus among historians that Çelebi’s work does not contain the most accurate description of all the places and people he encountered, and thus not of all the ways in which the social actors of the Damascus caravan interacted. However, I believe that with an critical eye it is possible to derive from his account a general view of the social network of this caravan because historical research have shown that these relationships did exist during the seventeenth century.
Çelebi’s motivation to write his Book of Travels is best expressed by a quote from himself. In volume IX, he writes:
“Because we humans are creatures of forgetfulness, lest their traces be effaced and their names be concealed, I began to make a record of noteworthy items – both man-made and God-made (i.e., naturally occurring) – and to write them down in order to provide memory clues, using well-worn expressions and a middling style, in accordance with the dictum, Talk to people according to the measure of their intellect.”
Çelebi’s ‘memory clues’ resulted mainly in a description of the cities and the people he encountered but we not always that accurate. So we must keep in mind that Çelebi was very subjective. First of all because he recorded only what he considered to be ‘noteworthy’ and according to Suraiya Faroqhi with the underlying intention to ‘exalt the glory of the Ottoman empire’. But, and more importantly, he was, as a member of the Ottoman elite, very close to the Ottomans bureaucracy of the Damascus caravan, and thus reflected their official point of view. This means that he did not made any attempt to understand the perspective of, for example, the Arab Bedouin communities.
Furthermore, the quote provides an indication of his intended audience. It seems that he intended to reach an average educated audience by using certain common expressions and an accessible style. Hatice Aynur confirms this by placing Çelebi in the orta category, one of the three categories put forward by Fahir İz to divide Ottoman prose. This orta category includes prose in which the author is more concerned with the content than with demonstrating his literary skills. This kind of prose is known as ‘popular Ottoman’ and was intended for literate townspeople.
Despite this intended audience, it is true that before the end of the nineteenth century very few people had ever read the Book of Travels. After his death it ended up in the private collection of his Egyptian patron, Özbek Bey, was only brought to Istanbul in 1742, and it would last more than a century before it ultimately was printed. It is therefore that Caroline Finkel argues that Çelebi’s real audience was rather the Ottoman elite, those people who actually read his accounts and who ascribed a high status to travelers because of the news they brought back. It was also this same Ottoman elite that encouraged, employed and patronized Çelebi, so whenever he returned from a journey, he found in these circles a particular interest in his adventures. This is underpinned by the various warnings about certain situations and places we find in Çelebi’s work. In relation to the Hajj he noted the various prayers that pilgrims needed to recite on certain moments. Together with the warnings this is according to most scholars a result of his desire to gave his accounts a practical purpose.
The question that remains is whether Çelebi’s volume IX: The Pilgrimage is a reliable source to explore the social network of the Damascus caravan of 1672. There exist a consensus among historians that Çelebi’s work does not contain the most accurate description of all the places and people he encountered, and thus not of all the ways in which the social actors of the Damascus caravan interacted. However, I believe that with an critical eye it is possible to derive from his account a general view of the social network of this caravan because historical research have shown that these relationships did exist during the seventeenth century.
The Network
The social network of the Damascus caravan of 1672 is for an analytical purpose divided into three layers: Ottoman officialdom, ranging from the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed IV(1648-1687), to the lowest official rank; the pilgrims of this particular caravan; and the suppliers consisting of the Arab Bedouin communities, the local inhabitants of the Hejaz and the merchants. These three layers interconnected with each other, forming together the whole social network.
The Damascus caravan was a well-structured financial and bureaucratic hierarchy with Hüsayn Pasha as the highest ranking official. His ties reached upward to the Sultan who charged him to protect the pilgrims and to supply the caravan. In addition he had an important symbolic duty, the safe transport and delivery to Mecca of the Sultan’s gifts and the state palanquin, or the mahmil, representing the presence of the Sultan. During this particular year this was even more important because Mehmed IV was engaged in a political struggle with the Sharif of Mecca. Hüsayn Pasha was responsible for ending this militarily but in addition had to fulfill this symbolic duty in order to symbolize the Sultan’s power and thus strengthening his rule in the Hejaz.
The Damascus caravan was a well-structured financial and bureaucratic hierarchy with Hüsayn Pasha as the highest ranking official. His ties reached upward to the Sultan who charged him to protect the pilgrims and to supply the caravan. In addition he had an important symbolic duty, the safe transport and delivery to Mecca of the Sultan’s gifts and the state palanquin, or the mahmil, representing the presence of the Sultan. During this particular year this was even more important because Mehmed IV was engaged in a political struggle with the Sharif of Mecca. Hüsayn Pasha was responsible for ending this militarily but in addition had to fulfill this symbolic duty in order to symbolize the Sultan’s power and thus strengthening his rule in the Hejaz.
Hüsayn Pasha also maintained ties to the Ottoman officials serving in the Damascus caravan. In order to maintain such a large enterprise, Hüsayn Pasha needed to delegate some of his many duties, which meant that a wide variety of officials were needed, each with special responsibilities. These included distributing the pilgrims into subsections, coordinating the movement of these subsections when they arrived at or departed from one of the stopping points, taking care of the horses and camels of the officials and soldiers, supervising the supplies and accounting the finances. In addition, there were various other officials like a judge, a supervisor of the poor who handled the alms provided by the Sultan, prayer leaders, muezzins, musicians and messengers.
The pilgrims came from various places in the Islamic world. Çelebi noted at one point the arrival of two-thousand Persian pilgrims but we can easily add pilgrims from Anatolia, Central Asia, Syria, Arabia, Iraq and possibly from India. In general, all pilgrims were responsible for their own supplies which resulted in many interconnected relationships. However, the ease in which a pilgrim was able to acquire supplies depended partly on his or her social status. High-ranking pilgrims were often considered vaciburreaye, prominent people who received a certain amount of supplies from Ottoman officaldom. On the other side of the social spectrum were the poor pilgrims who also received a certain amount of supplies which was part of official Ottoman policy.
It seems that Çelebi was considered to be a vaciburreaye because he received supplies from Hüsayn Pasha ranging from money, camels and a tent to food and water for himself, his slave boys and his camels. The list of supplies he mentioned seems like to include everything he would need were it not that he also engaged in trade. The extent to which he did this is difficult to say since he only once mentioned at the first stop, the large fair at Müzayrib, that ‘we were buying and selling and securing provisions’. With whom he specially traded, what kind of commodities and for what price remains unclear.
Hüsayn Pasha maintained ties both to the Sultan and the pilgrims and it happened sometimes that these conflicted. At Müzayrib the Damascus caravan was caught in a severe rainstorm which according to Çelebi ‘sent everyone scurrying for their lives’. The storm jeopardized the guarantee of enough supplies and thus the arrival in Mecca on time. Some pilgrims went to Hüsayn Pasha to discuss the situation and insisted that something had to be done. Keeping in mind his responsibilities to Mehmed IV Hüsayn Pasha reacted, according to Çelebi, by saying that ‘the Hajj is not obligatory as long as the road is not safe’ and that ‘my charge is not to convey the pilgrims, but rather to convey the noble mahmil and the two Egyptian treasures of the holy endowment (i.e. the Sultan’s annual gifts) to Mecca. If the mahmil of Egypt reaches there but the mahmil of Damascus fails to, that would be a stain on the honour of the Ottoman dynasty.’ He proposed a forced march in order to reach Mecca on time and whoever was not able to join
him should go back. According to Çelebi this was greeted with applause by everyone
but we must keep in mind his subjectivity towards Ottoman officialdom.
The suppliers consisted of different groups, among them the Arab Bedouin communities of the Hejaz. They maintained an ambivalent position towards the Damascus caravan because, on the one hand, they were the key suppliers of camels, food and other provisions but, on the other hand, they formed the main threat to the safety of the pilgrims. In general this was bought off by the Ottoman government by paying official subsidies to the Bedouin, known as sürre. In exchange they were obliged to provide the caravan with the required supplies for which the price was negotiated beforehand. It was at the fair of Müzayrib where the first large scale trading took place. In his account Çelebi stated that ‘In this bazaar, 40,000 or 50,000 Damascus pilgrims sped five or six Egyptian treasures and then get 40,000 or 50,000 camels from the Arab tribes.’ In addition a couple thousand more were provided to the Ottoman officials. Since there was never a serious attempt to count all the pilgrims or camels, it is likely that Çelebi made a guess and probably being impressed by the scale of Müzayrib he exaggerated the amount.
Due to the setbacks of the Damascus caravan caused by the heavy rainstorm, a different arrangement than usual was made with the Bedouin concerning the supply of grain. Çelebi noted that the transportation of the grain to Ma’an and al-‘Ula was entrusted to the Bedouin from Müzayrib. However, according to Faroqhi it is likely that the grain was not physically transported but that allied Bedouin at both towns supplied the caravan from their respective stock when they arrived there. This shows that the Damascus caravan was depended on the tribal networks of the Bedouin, especially in difficult circumstances. When further down the road the water supply of the caravan was threatened due to fighting Bedouin communties, who filled up or defiled the water wells, the relationship between these Bedouin and Hüsayn Pasha turned into a less peaceful one. According to Çelebi he refused to pay the sürre to those Bedouin he accused of filling up the wells. This shows that it also could be used as a punitive tool. Some of the Bedouin protested and were subsequently arrested and in some cases even killed.
The second group consisted of the Arab inhabitants of the Hejaz with whom trading proved not always easy. When the Damascus caravan passed by the town of Katran Kalesi the inhabitants initially refused to provide the caravan with supplies. They claimed that according to an order by the local governor they were not obliged to and therefore had closed the gates. In reality this was a bargaining trick in order to raise the price of their goods and thus to make more profit. Çelebi noted that for horse fodder one gurus was charged, which resulted in large profits for the inhabitants. According to Çelebi the inhabitants of Ma’an also made a substantial wealth by trading with both the Bedouin and the Damascus caravan and estimated the amount of profits at 5000 to 6000 gurus a year. In the town of al-‘Ula Hüsayn Pasha again gained the upper hand in the bargaining process due to a criminal offence. Some locals who had robbed a pilgrim were punished which made the other inhabitants, feared by the military reprisals, to subsequently price their goods very low.
The third group consisted of small and great merchants. The great merchants engaged in the trade between the Hejaz and India and some of them carried Asian goods like spices, textiles and so on from the sea port of Jidda along the Red Sea to the markets in Damascus. It is likely that a portion of these goods were bought by the small merchants from Damascus who then carried them along the caravan route in order to sell them at the various market places. At the large fair at Müzayrib Çelebi noted that in addition to the tents of the Damascus caravan ‘there were 5000 tents and huts belonging to tradesmen’ and he counted hundreds of shops. According to Çelebi ‘It was a sea of men, all jostling shoulders. Everything was for sale except the elixir of life, including silks, brocades and satins and other precious stuffs.’
But why did these small merchants sell their goods along the caravan route? First of all, the thousands of pilgrims constituted a significant market, although these were smaller than the one’s in Medina, Mecca, Mocha and Jidda. It seems that there existed a demand for goods which were not immediately needed by the pilgrims, which made these markets economically attractive. However, the Damascus caravan provided not the best trading opportunities because it was, due to the delay caused by the rainstorm at Müzayrib, in a hurry to reach Mecca on time. It therefore only rested in the towns of Ma’an and al-‘Ula, which meant that the overall trade was consequently limited. The caravan route was also often used by the small merchants to transport their goods from Damascus to Mecca due to the relative safety the caravan provided. In addition they used land routes to avoid the maritime customs, although some taxes were charged by the Ottoman bureaucracy. In general, it thus seems that the Damascus caravan provided some important incentives for the small merchants from Damascus who, by carrying the Asian goods, integrated the market places along the caravan route into the larger global market .
The pilgrims came from various places in the Islamic world. Çelebi noted at one point the arrival of two-thousand Persian pilgrims but we can easily add pilgrims from Anatolia, Central Asia, Syria, Arabia, Iraq and possibly from India. In general, all pilgrims were responsible for their own supplies which resulted in many interconnected relationships. However, the ease in which a pilgrim was able to acquire supplies depended partly on his or her social status. High-ranking pilgrims were often considered vaciburreaye, prominent people who received a certain amount of supplies from Ottoman officaldom. On the other side of the social spectrum were the poor pilgrims who also received a certain amount of supplies which was part of official Ottoman policy.
It seems that Çelebi was considered to be a vaciburreaye because he received supplies from Hüsayn Pasha ranging from money, camels and a tent to food and water for himself, his slave boys and his camels. The list of supplies he mentioned seems like to include everything he would need were it not that he also engaged in trade. The extent to which he did this is difficult to say since he only once mentioned at the first stop, the large fair at Müzayrib, that ‘we were buying and selling and securing provisions’. With whom he specially traded, what kind of commodities and for what price remains unclear.
Hüsayn Pasha maintained ties both to the Sultan and the pilgrims and it happened sometimes that these conflicted. At Müzayrib the Damascus caravan was caught in a severe rainstorm which according to Çelebi ‘sent everyone scurrying for their lives’. The storm jeopardized the guarantee of enough supplies and thus the arrival in Mecca on time. Some pilgrims went to Hüsayn Pasha to discuss the situation and insisted that something had to be done. Keeping in mind his responsibilities to Mehmed IV Hüsayn Pasha reacted, according to Çelebi, by saying that ‘the Hajj is not obligatory as long as the road is not safe’ and that ‘my charge is not to convey the pilgrims, but rather to convey the noble mahmil and the two Egyptian treasures of the holy endowment (i.e. the Sultan’s annual gifts) to Mecca. If the mahmil of Egypt reaches there but the mahmil of Damascus fails to, that would be a stain on the honour of the Ottoman dynasty.’ He proposed a forced march in order to reach Mecca on time and whoever was not able to join
him should go back. According to Çelebi this was greeted with applause by everyone
but we must keep in mind his subjectivity towards Ottoman officialdom.
The suppliers consisted of different groups, among them the Arab Bedouin communities of the Hejaz. They maintained an ambivalent position towards the Damascus caravan because, on the one hand, they were the key suppliers of camels, food and other provisions but, on the other hand, they formed the main threat to the safety of the pilgrims. In general this was bought off by the Ottoman government by paying official subsidies to the Bedouin, known as sürre. In exchange they were obliged to provide the caravan with the required supplies for which the price was negotiated beforehand. It was at the fair of Müzayrib where the first large scale trading took place. In his account Çelebi stated that ‘In this bazaar, 40,000 or 50,000 Damascus pilgrims sped five or six Egyptian treasures and then get 40,000 or 50,000 camels from the Arab tribes.’ In addition a couple thousand more were provided to the Ottoman officials. Since there was never a serious attempt to count all the pilgrims or camels, it is likely that Çelebi made a guess and probably being impressed by the scale of Müzayrib he exaggerated the amount.
Due to the setbacks of the Damascus caravan caused by the heavy rainstorm, a different arrangement than usual was made with the Bedouin concerning the supply of grain. Çelebi noted that the transportation of the grain to Ma’an and al-‘Ula was entrusted to the Bedouin from Müzayrib. However, according to Faroqhi it is likely that the grain was not physically transported but that allied Bedouin at both towns supplied the caravan from their respective stock when they arrived there. This shows that the Damascus caravan was depended on the tribal networks of the Bedouin, especially in difficult circumstances. When further down the road the water supply of the caravan was threatened due to fighting Bedouin communties, who filled up or defiled the water wells, the relationship between these Bedouin and Hüsayn Pasha turned into a less peaceful one. According to Çelebi he refused to pay the sürre to those Bedouin he accused of filling up the wells. This shows that it also could be used as a punitive tool. Some of the Bedouin protested and were subsequently arrested and in some cases even killed.
The second group consisted of the Arab inhabitants of the Hejaz with whom trading proved not always easy. When the Damascus caravan passed by the town of Katran Kalesi the inhabitants initially refused to provide the caravan with supplies. They claimed that according to an order by the local governor they were not obliged to and therefore had closed the gates. In reality this was a bargaining trick in order to raise the price of their goods and thus to make more profit. Çelebi noted that for horse fodder one gurus was charged, which resulted in large profits for the inhabitants. According to Çelebi the inhabitants of Ma’an also made a substantial wealth by trading with both the Bedouin and the Damascus caravan and estimated the amount of profits at 5000 to 6000 gurus a year. In the town of al-‘Ula Hüsayn Pasha again gained the upper hand in the bargaining process due to a criminal offence. Some locals who had robbed a pilgrim were punished which made the other inhabitants, feared by the military reprisals, to subsequently price their goods very low.
The third group consisted of small and great merchants. The great merchants engaged in the trade between the Hejaz and India and some of them carried Asian goods like spices, textiles and so on from the sea port of Jidda along the Red Sea to the markets in Damascus. It is likely that a portion of these goods were bought by the small merchants from Damascus who then carried them along the caravan route in order to sell them at the various market places. At the large fair at Müzayrib Çelebi noted that in addition to the tents of the Damascus caravan ‘there were 5000 tents and huts belonging to tradesmen’ and he counted hundreds of shops. According to Çelebi ‘It was a sea of men, all jostling shoulders. Everything was for sale except the elixir of life, including silks, brocades and satins and other precious stuffs.’
But why did these small merchants sell their goods along the caravan route? First of all, the thousands of pilgrims constituted a significant market, although these were smaller than the one’s in Medina, Mecca, Mocha and Jidda. It seems that there existed a demand for goods which were not immediately needed by the pilgrims, which made these markets economically attractive. However, the Damascus caravan provided not the best trading opportunities because it was, due to the delay caused by the rainstorm at Müzayrib, in a hurry to reach Mecca on time. It therefore only rested in the towns of Ma’an and al-‘Ula, which meant that the overall trade was consequently limited. The caravan route was also often used by the small merchants to transport their goods from Damascus to Mecca due to the relative safety the caravan provided. In addition they used land routes to avoid the maritime customs, although some taxes were charged by the Ottoman bureaucracy. In general, it thus seems that the Damascus caravan provided some important incentives for the small merchants from Damascus who, by carrying the Asian goods, integrated the market places along the caravan route into the larger global market .
Conclusion
At the heart of the social network was the interdependent relationship between Ottoman officialdom who was obliged to ensure security along the route and the pilgrims who from their perspective depended on this. To provide this security and ensure enough supplies Ottoman officialdom maintained an interdependent relationship with the suppliers, of which the Arab Bedouin communities also formed the greatest threat. However, for the most important part the suppliers were in their turn depended on this relationship to maintain their livelihood. Thus, between Ottoman officialdom, the pilgrims and the suppliers a delicate triangular interconnected relationship was maintained, which defined the political, social and economic structures of the Damascus caravan.
Ottoman officialdom was the most dominant layer, with Hüsayn Pasha as the most central figure, because it maintained and controlled by far the most ties. The best example of this was the camel trade at Müzayrib, where the Bedouin were obliged to sell their camels at a fixed price in exchange for the sürre. Hüsayn Pasha conducted the negotiations with the Bedouin thereby opening up the transfer of money and goods between the different social actors. However, he also severely limited trade due to the forced march he proposed to reach Mecca on time. This was encouraged by his tie to the Sultan which he considered the most important. Thus, he was not an independent actor, but rather dependent on the Sultan’s political will, who in his turn was dependent on Hüsayn Pasha for carrying this out.
The position of Evliya Çelebi in this social network was not that central, or even that important. As a prominent pilgrim he received some supplies and thus maintained a direct tie to Hüsayn Pasha, which distinguished him from the average pilgrim. However, like any other pilgrims, he had no direct influence and had to engage in trade to provide for his additional supplies. He thus was somewhat closer to the Ottoman officaldom than other pilgrims, which does explains his subjectivity, but overall he was not an important figure.
Economically, the social network approach provides some insights on the position of the Damascus caravan of 1672 in the global economic market. In a period where the global maritime trade expanded coastal port-cities along the Red Sea, like Jidda, grew even more important. The great and small merchants carrying Asian goods connected this port-city via Damascus with the markets along the caravan route to Mecca. Although these markets were placed at the periphery, we find that due to trade centered around the Damascus caravan, they were well-integrated into the global market. Çelebi’s account of the fair at Müzayrib is likely exaggerated, it does provide an general view of the economic interconnected relationship between the social actors of the Damascus caravan of 1672.
WvdS
Ottoman officialdom was the most dominant layer, with Hüsayn Pasha as the most central figure, because it maintained and controlled by far the most ties. The best example of this was the camel trade at Müzayrib, where the Bedouin were obliged to sell their camels at a fixed price in exchange for the sürre. Hüsayn Pasha conducted the negotiations with the Bedouin thereby opening up the transfer of money and goods between the different social actors. However, he also severely limited trade due to the forced march he proposed to reach Mecca on time. This was encouraged by his tie to the Sultan which he considered the most important. Thus, he was not an independent actor, but rather dependent on the Sultan’s political will, who in his turn was dependent on Hüsayn Pasha for carrying this out.
The position of Evliya Çelebi in this social network was not that central, or even that important. As a prominent pilgrim he received some supplies and thus maintained a direct tie to Hüsayn Pasha, which distinguished him from the average pilgrim. However, like any other pilgrims, he had no direct influence and had to engage in trade to provide for his additional supplies. He thus was somewhat closer to the Ottoman officaldom than other pilgrims, which does explains his subjectivity, but overall he was not an important figure.
Economically, the social network approach provides some insights on the position of the Damascus caravan of 1672 in the global economic market. In a period where the global maritime trade expanded coastal port-cities along the Red Sea, like Jidda, grew even more important. The great and small merchants carrying Asian goods connected this port-city via Damascus with the markets along the caravan route to Mecca. Although these markets were placed at the periphery, we find that due to trade centered around the Damascus caravan, they were well-integrated into the global market. Çelebi’s account of the fair at Müzayrib is likely exaggerated, it does provide an general view of the economic interconnected relationship between the social actors of the Damascus caravan of 1672.
WvdS
Further Information
Literature:
Dankoff, Robert and Sooyong Kim. An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliya Çelebi. London: Eland Publishing Limited, 2010.
Faroghi, Suraiya. Pilgrims and Sultans: the Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683. London: I.B. Tauris, 1994.
Faroqhi, Suraiya . “Red Sea Trade and Communications as Observed by Evliya Çelebi (1671-1672)”. New Perspectives on Turkey (fall, 1991), 5-6, 87-105.
Pearson, M.N. Pious Passengers. London: Hurst and Company, 1994.
Peters, F.E. The Hajj: the Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Other:
http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2012/08/evliya-celebi-early-modern-travel-and.html
Illustrations
Figure 1: The Ottoman Empire. Source: online.wsu.edu (consulted on 4-6-2015)
Figure 2: Evliya Celebi. Source: http://www.dunyabulteni.net/tarih-dosyasi/236284/bir-kultur-tasiyicisi-evliya-celebi (consulted on 4-6-2015)
Figure 3: Cover of An Ottoman Traveller by Dankoff and Kim. Source: http://www.slideshare.net/pkiprovska1/book-of-travels-of-evliya-celebi (consulted on 4-6-2015)
Figure 4: the layers of the Damascus caravan
Figure 5: the route of the Damascus caravan. Source: Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans, the Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683, xii.
Figure 1: The Ottoman Empire. Source: online.wsu.edu (consulted on 4-6-2015)
Figure 2: Evliya Celebi. Source: http://www.dunyabulteni.net/tarih-dosyasi/236284/bir-kultur-tasiyicisi-evliya-celebi (consulted on 4-6-2015)
Figure 3: Cover of An Ottoman Traveller by Dankoff and Kim. Source: http://www.slideshare.net/pkiprovska1/book-of-travels-of-evliya-celebi (consulted on 4-6-2015)
Figure 4: the layers of the Damascus caravan
Figure 5: the route of the Damascus caravan. Source: Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans, the Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683, xii.