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***Do Not Circulate***

Chapter 5 Draft

The Seasonal Empire: The Imperial Surre Registers and the Seasonality of Ottoman Power

In mid-April 1671 the seasonal Ottoman imperial hajj caravan arrived to the city of

Medina traveling from Istanbul via Damascus. The caravan brought with it the multitude of

pilgrims from the Balkans, Anatolia, Syria, and Iran. But a more important fact for many of the

residents of Medina was that this caravan also carried with it the imperial Surre. The Surre was

the annual stipend from the Ottoman state which provided funds to thousands of people in the

holy cities generally in exchange for prayers or religious functions. The Ottoman pilgrim Evliya

Çelebi recounts the process by which these payments were distributed by the Ottoman state

providing a glimpse at the scale of this imperial sponsorship project. He writes that “the trustee

of the Surre hands these [funds] out day and night by torchlight…the beneficiaries receive their

share according to the imperial register and say a prayer for the sultan.”1 Having only the days in

which the caravan was in either Medina or Mecca, the Ottoman officials needed to provided the

correct amount of funds to the correct individuals, who numbered in the thousands. The

meticulous records of the distribution of Surre provide a vital insight into Ottoman networks of

imperial influence which stretched across the Harameyn and the global connective hub which its

diverse residents represented.

This influence was part seasonal, occurring only when the Ottoman hajj caravan and its

funds could be distributed to those residents of Mecca and Medina. The recipients of these

imperial stipends, through one annual interaction with imperial officials, were paid to provide a

1 Evliya Çelebi. Evliya Çelebi in Medina: The Relevant Sections of the Seyahatname, edited by Nurettin Gemici, (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 120-21.

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lasting imperial presence in the most sacred spaces of Islam through the prayers, institutions, and

daily life which these stipends supported. The Surre allows us to reimagine what empire means,

understand the different corridors of power through which empire operates, and the seasonality

of imperial power and influence in the early modern world.

Amongst the thousands of names and endowments recorded in the diligently preserved

1671 Surre registers is one peculiar example of the interconnectivity of the global early modern

Islamic world. A certain Sheikh al-Seyyid Salih Balkhi Naqshibandi, a foreign resident2 of

Medina from Balkh in modern Afghanistan, was paid by the Ottoman state an annual stipend of

15 hisse.3 These coins destined for this man from Balkh were strangely sourced by the Ottoman

Empire from collection of the harvest in the small Romanian farming regions of Caransebeș and

Lugoj.4 The distance between the homeland of this Naqshibandi Sufi and Christian peasants in

Caransebeș and Lugoj who produced the harvest through which he received his stipend was more

than 1,800 miles longer than the distance which separated England and its colonies in the New

World.5 The hajj and the holy spaces of Mecca and Medina provided the Ottoman Empire with

access to global networks as connective as any other in the early modern world. The Ottomans

were able to leverage the resources of their vast empire to fund and influence an impressive

network of individuals and families with global connections residing in the Harameyn.

2 EV. HMK. SR, 176, fol. 5a.3 Ibid.4 Ibid., Karl Barbir says that after 1714 the route shifted to Damascus but I believe that the Surre in the 1670s was also sent via Damascus at times given the lack of any Egyptian registers and presence of registers from Damascus and Aleppo attached to the Surre collection held in the Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivleri (The Prime Minister's Ottoman Archives) in Istanbul. While there are references cited for the Surre leaving Egypt in the early 18th century I would guess that it is possible that everything registered as with the Surre could have traveled via different caravans to make it to Mecca and Medina, hence the inclusion of the Damascus and Aleppo registers with the Surre material during the 17th century. 5 Ibid., 218, and see Ismail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Mekke-i Mükerreme Emirleri, (Ankara: Türk Tarihi Kurumu Yayınları, 2013), 35.

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The case of a man from Balkh finding money in his pocket from revenues of the sale of a

Romanian harvest is by no means unique when one dives deeply into the Surre registers. His

name is one of thousands recorded in the 1671 Surre registers which demonstrate the global

network of Muslims found residing in Mecca and Medina. These annual imperial stipends,

funded through various means, like the Romanian harvests, were brought by the Ottoman state to

the people of Mecca and Medina and bound their lives and livelihoods inextricably to the

Ottoman Empire and the resources it could muster. This annual stipend served to tie a web of

individuals and families to an Ottoman imperial network and seemingly binding Muslims from

across the Islamic world, drawn to the Harameyn by the hajj and Islam. The Surre registers

provide the only data-driven, non-anecdotal, evidence for the global and diverse collection of

peoples who lived in Mecca and Medina during the early modern period. These registers also

showcase the ways in which Ottoman imperial influence and its stipend networks had global

reach but was also seasonal and mitigated by the seasonality and physical presence of the hajj

caravan. As has been demonstrated in the previous chapters, we need to rethink our notions of

empires and imperial impact on society. What did imperial control in contested spaces or on the

margins of empire mean for the day to day lives of early modern subjects? The Surre registers

provides us with the tools to better confront the conflicted realities of this question by revealing

the physical reach of imperial power while simultaneously, through the seasonality of the hajj

caravan and the distribution of the Surre, the limitations of that power.

I. THE SURRE REGISTERS

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The tradition of the Surre gift sent from the Ottoman Sultan to the people of Mecca and

Medina began with Sultan Beyezid I (r.1389-1402) and became standardized with yearly

registers from around the year 1600 onwards with the reign of Sultan Ahmed I (r.1603-1617).6

This annual gifts sent from the imperial treasury and various religious endowments (vaqf ) were

initially sent by sea from Istanbul to Egypt from where it would travel with the Egyptian Caravan

to Mecca and Medina.7 Over the course of seventeenth and eighteenth century the imperial Surre

came to be associated with the Ottoman hajj caravan from Damascus.8 The Surre’s movement

across space from the heart of the Ottoman palace in Istanbul to the heart of Islam in Mecca an

Medina provided the Ottoman Empire with a unique corridor through which they could expand

their networks of influence in the Islamic world.

Generally, the Surre would leave Istanbul on the 12th of the Islamic month of Receb every

year, which was three months before the hajj caravan left from Damascus.9 A great ceremony in

the imperial palace (Topkapı Palace) accompanied the departure of the Surre. At this point the

funds collected for the Surre were counted, registered, and prepared for transport to the Holy

Cities.10 The money of the Surre was generally collected in the imperial palace in Istanbul before

it departed with the caravan for the Harameyn. This whole process was overseen by a chief

eunuch of the imperial harem (kızlar ağası).11 This important responsibility gave the chief

eunuch in Istanbul a large amount of prestige and political power by overseeing the imperial

6 See Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 128-30, or for an edition with full footnotes citing the specific Ottoman documents that describe this see Ismail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Mekke-i Mükerreme Emirleri…,35-40.7 Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 129. Also see Ismail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Mekke-i Mükerreme Emirleri…,36-39,57. Barbir essentially translates the Turkish description of this from Uzunçarşılı who pieces the ceremony together from various archival sources from the Başbakanlık Ottoman Archive.8 Ibid.9 Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994), 89,10 Ibid.11 The basic Ottoman currency, akçe is used by Güler in his work though in my reading of the Surre registers for the seventeenth century “akçe” never mentioned but rather several different kinds of currency are noted. Therefore, the currency total tables included in his work might present a cleaner picture of Ottoman payments then in reality.

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monetary connection to the Harameyn and was an important node in the network of imperial

eunuchs and the holy cities.12 The ritual surrounding the departure of the Surre from the imperial

palace in Istanbul demonstrates the ways in which Ottoman elites viewed the importance of the

Surre stipend. Present at this ceremony was the Ottoman sultan, the grand vizier of the empire,

and the chief haram eunuch who would present the “purses of money” and the royal letter to the

sultan for inspection.13 The camels which carried the Surre were paraded around the courtyard of

the palace from where the ritual would conclude with the chief haram eunuch leading the camels

and their litter to the sultan, prostrating before him and kissing the ground.14 The pomp and

circumstance surrounding the preparation of the Surre demonstrates the importance of the event

to the Ottoman Empire and the specific central role the sultan and one of the chief eunuchs of his

household, the kızlar ağası, played in the whole affair. The Surre was an imperial sponsored

project orchestrated from the central corridors of power in the heart of the palace in Istanbul, as

direct an imperial action by the Ottoman state upon the society it presided over as any military

campaign, codification of sultanic law, or collection of taxes.

Upon arrival in Mecca and Medina the money was distributed to the thousands of people

registered within the Surre register’s leather-bound pages. The prominent mentions and

depictions by various pilgrims of the Ottoman distribution of the Surre in Mecca and Medina, as

shown in the previous chapters, showcase that the Surre was not only important due to its

monetary value but also due to its significant symbolic impact for both the people of Istanbul and

12 See Surre register- EV.HMK.SR, 169,171,172,173,174,175,176. The regional origin of the people newly endowed in these registers from Mehmed IV’s reign skew heavily towards regional backgrounds connected to Anatolia and the Balkans, a distinct shift from the more global spread of origins of those individuals endowed found in the other earlier registers. This interesting shift in the regional background of those endowed might have to do maybe with notions that people from the Balkans and Anatolia were more loyal to the empire or that those choosing the people endowed began to favor individuals that they personally knew, it is unclear.13 For a detailed account of the life and times of Mehmed IV see Mark David Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).14 Ibid., 137.

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the people of Mecca and Medina. The amount of money the Ottoman state sent yearly to Mecca

and Medina was staggering. Suraiya Faroqhi notes in her work on the hajj that the cost of

sending the hajj caravan along with the gifts cost in the early seventeenth century anywhere from

300,000 to 385,000 gold pieces.15 For comparison she notes that the cost of the year-long war

against the Habsburgs at the same time cost the imperial treasury 618,416 gold pieces.16 It is

clear that hajj and Ottoman patronage of the hajj was a priority for the Ottoman state given its

significant financial investment, being up to half the annual cost of a mobilized Ottoman army

against the Habsburg Empire in Central Europe.

This chapter will examine a specific cross-section of the Surre registers and use it to

better understand the role of the Ottoman state in late seventeenth-century Mecca and Medina.

Nevertheless, while the Surre registers represent the most direct and organized forms of payment

and endowment from the Ottoman Empire to the cities of Mecca and Medina they are not the

only records of endowment. Famously, Egypt, whose records are held in separate registers, also

provided large amounts of money and food to the cities of Mecca and Medina. Moreover, many

small religious endowments and sources of revenue throughout the Ottoman Empire were

designated for the Holy Cities but were not included with the official Surre. Many of these

registers are scattered and not systematically organized as are the Surre registers. Therefore, the

data produced in this chapter represents the payments earmarked for the Surre gift and are

therefore more directly tied to an imperial Ottoman initiative to sponsor people in Mecca and

Medina. It should be remembered that the large amount of money shown through the Surre

registers actually only represents a fraction of the total amount of funds which yearly made their

15 Banu Khalid Rebellion discussed in chapter 4.16 The Jerusalem and Hebron Surre is EV.HMK.SR, 168, the Medina Surre are EV.HMK.SR, 165,167,170,172,173,174, and 176, and the Mecca Surre are EV.HMK.SR, 166,169,171, and 175.

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way to Mecca and Medina both from endowments within the Ottoman Empire and from foreign

powers, as discussed in chapter four.

A. OUTLINE OF THE SURRE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

The Surre in the seventeenth century is particularly defined by the reign of Sultan

Mehmed IV (r.1648-1687) which oversaw increasing Ottoman investment in the endowments

sent to the Harameyn. The case for this is laid out in Mustafa Güler’s work who cites that the

total amount of money sent via the Surre as a percentage of total Ottoman budget increased from

one percent of the total imperial budget in 1653 to two percent in 1660 and then to three percent

in 1666.17 This stands in comparison to his initial estimate that from 1528 onwards the Ottoman

Empire invested a generally consistent amount up until the 1630s. This amount in 1528 was two

percent of the total Ottoman budget and over the course of the early seventeenth century the

share these endowments took in the Ottoman budget steadily decreased due to deflation and

increasing imperial expenditures. It appears that it was only during Mehmed IV’s reign that the

shortfall in funds due to deflation was addressed and the total expenditure as its relation to the

general Ottoman budget increased.18 Güler’s comparison of total funds sent to the Harameyn

with the Surre, as shown by its relative share of the total Ottoman budget, is useful due to the

amount of inflation in Ottoman currency during the seventeenth century. This is illustrated in the

fact that in 1528 4,286,475 Ottoman akçe19, representing two percent of the total Ottoman

budget, was sent to the Harameyn with the Surre and in 1666 that number was 15,962,000

17 These are EV.HMK.SR, 165 and 166.18 Amnon Cohen, Palestine in the 18th Century: Patterns of Government and Administration, (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1973), 20. And see Jane Hathaway and Karl Barbir, The Arab Lands Under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800, (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2008), 89-90, and see Jane Hathaway, The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem…, 154-157.19 Compiled from EV.HMK.SR, 165,166,167,169,170,171,172,173,174,175, 176, the value of each of the currencies varies greatly and it seems that the Dirham is the weakest of the currencies by far

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Ottoman akçe making up three percent of the total Ottoman budget.20 Of course, the comparative

growth of the total Ottoman budget also showcases an increase in taxation and revenue for the

Ottoman state over that same time period. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that while

the jump in money invested in the Harameyn was significant, the gap between the two sums

might not be as large as the numbers indicate due to inflation.21

It is clear that there was a systematic attempt by Sultan Mehmed IV to reinvest in the

Harameyn and hajj caravan route during the second half of the seventeenth century. Beyond the

increase in total investment as discussed previously. We can also see that the Surre during the

reign of Mehmed IV came to include new religious endowments tied to members of the Ottoman

family and to the new conquests of the Ottoman Empire during the seventeenth century. These

new sources of funding included the endowment from the tomb of Sultan Murad IV (r.1623-

1640), Turhan Hadice Sultan (regent 1651-56, Queen Mother of Mehmed IV), the endowments

on the Island of Crete (conquered 1669), and the revenues from the cities of Caransebeș and

Lugoj which were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire from Transylvania in 1658.22 These

represent seven of the twelve separate Surre registers in 1671 and demonstrate the relatively new

investments and sources of income the Ottomans infused into the Harameyn with the Surre in the

latter portion of the seventeenth century and Mehmed IV’s reign.

Connected to these developments, Sultan Mehmed IV’s favorite concubine, Gülnuş

Emetullah Sultan, created several endowments designated for Mecca and Medina in the 1670s

and 80s as well.23 Moreover, the only years Caransebeș and Lugoj sent money to the Harameyn

20 For more information on the role of the Şeyhü’l-Harem see Jane Hathaway, The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem: From African Slave to Power-Broker, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 118-125.21 This is also noted by Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 127.22 See EV.HMK.SR, 165 and 167.23 EV.HMK.SR, 165, 167, 175, 176. By the mid-18th century Barbir notes that even the taxes collected from Christian Monasteries in Jerusalem are being used for the Hajj. See Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 124.

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were from 1659 to 1686 representing the first year it was incorporated into the empire through

the height of the Ottoman-Habsburg wars where the region soon found itself on the frontlines

and eventually captured by Habsburg forces.24 For understanding the Surre in the seventeenth

century it is clear, at least in this instance, that the Ottoman-Habsburg war of 1683-1699 had

empire-wide impact, siphoning off Ottoman funds designated for the Harameyn. The war seems

to have interrupted any continued reinvestment in the hajj and the holy cities. Even Sultan

Mehmed IV himself was ousted from the throne due to the series of defeats inflicted upon the

Ottomans during the course of the war.25

After the Ottoman-Habsburg war concluded at the close of the seventeenth century the

Ottoman Empire again reinvested in the hajj and the Islam’s holy cities. This is particularly

evident with the major Ottoman effort in the early eighteenth century to rebuild and refit the

Ottoman hajj forts established in the desert on the route from Damascus to Medina.26 This

fortress network witnessed an influx of construction starting in Sultan Murad IV reign (1623-

1640) and increasingly during the Grand Vizirate of Fazil Ahmed Pasha (1661-1676).27

However, major repairs and renovation along the fortress networks began again in earnest in

1708 under the command of the governor of Damascus, Nasuh Pasha.28 The construction and

renovation of the hajj route fortress network continued throughout the eighteenth century under

the tutelage of several Ottoman governors of Damascus.29 As demonstrated in the pilgrimage

24 EV.HMK.SR, 165, fol. 61a. This endowment is labeled as being from Mehmed Çelebi Katib of the Vilayet (Province) of Yemen, it may be that while Mehmed Çelebi served in some capacity in what remained of the Ottoman province of Yemen in the seventeenth century but his endowment may have been located somewhere nearer to Istanbul given the context of the rest of the register.25 EV. HMK. SR, 171, fol. 8b.26 EV. HMK. SR, 167, fol. 45a.27 Ende, W., “Mud̲j̲āwir”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Consulted online on 10 November 2018 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_5307>, First published online: 201228 Compiled from EV.HMK.SR, 165,166,167,169,170,171,172,173,174,175, 176. Need to update names on map, Maras should be Diyarbakir, and a few others should be repositioned 29 Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 126.

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narratives and with the 1670 Banu Khalid tribal rebellion, Ottoman investment in the hajj route

itself was necessary to maintain a secure link between imperial centers in the Levant and the holy

cities. Therefore, investment in the hajj fortress network supported Ottoman efforts to maintain

the hajj links that allowed them to infuse money, influence, and power in the Harameyn.

The latter half of the seventeenth century witnessed a reinvigorated effort by the Ottoman

state to assert its power in the Harameyn financially. The caravan served as an important tool by

which the state could challenge the authority and independence of the Sharifs of Mecca,

particularly Sharif Saad b. Zeyd. However, the force of arms and show of power the Ottoman

hajj caravan came to represent also brought with it an increasing amount of funds for the people

of the Harameyn. This financial influence was most likely the most coercive tool for the Ottoman

Empire, challenging local power networks and assuring loyalty to the Ottoman state.

The Surre is the most specific embodiment of this seasonal financial investment by the

empire which was increasingly prominent during the seventeenth century. The seventeenth-

century Ottoman Empire was defined by crisis and change. However, despite the monetary,

political, and geopolitical crises of the seventeenth century, the Ottoman state managed to

reinvest funds meant to expand and solidify Ottoman networks of influence in the Harameyn. It

is unclear what was the impetus for this change and increase in investiture by the empire. The

increasing independence of the Sharifs of Mecca threatened the tenuous link of sacred authority

bestowed upon the empire by the holy cities since the early sixteenth century. It has also been

argued that increasing religiosity deeply impacted the court of Sultan Mehmed IV during this

period as well.30 Moreover, one could argue that Ottoman expanding influence and power during

30 It is always hard to disentangle what may be due to sectarian bias or imperial competition but I lean towards the conclusion that this may have been to imperial competition and sectarian difference followed that distinction, also see Rula Abisaab, Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004).

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the latter half of the seventeenth century in the Harameyn could be seen in conjunction with

other imperial project at the time, such as, the conquest of Crete, the incorporation of new

Romanian territories, the expansion into Poland, and the wars that led up to the second siege of

Vienna.

The answer for why now, for what purpose, why invest in the hajj during the latter half of

the seventeenth century while the empire grappled with a myriad array of challenges is difficult

to answer but it appears that the answer might lay somewhere in between all three of the

situations mentioned above. The challenges presented by Sharif Saad b. Zeyd certainly were

reason enough to reassert Ottoman control in region and a greater sense by Mehmed IV and his

court influenced by the Kadızadelis might have played a role in refocusing imperial energy on

their sacred responsibility and claims in the region. Most importantly conceptions of Ottoman

investment in the Harameyn should understood in the context of the expansion of the Ottoman

Empire during latter half of the seventeenth century. The Ottoman conquests in the Balkans and

Central Europe became fleeting footnotes in history due to the disaster at the second siege of

Vienna in 1683, but the Ottoman expanding influence in the Harameyn, which occurred in

conjunction with those conquests, continued in to the eighteenth century when its Balkan

counterparts could not. Historians have not connected Ottoman expansion on its Balkan frontiers

and its growing influence on its Arabian ones because the former did not see the end of the

century while the later remained within the empire’s orbit until the first world war. Ottoman

investment through the Surre in the Harameyn became an important tool of the empire to assert

influence and make claims of sacred authority with increasing resonance from the mid-

seventeenth century onwards.

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B. AN OUTLINE OF THE SURRE OF 1671

While work on the Surre registers usually takes the form of Güler’s work, using totals of

money from various years to explain change over time, this project aims to seek to understand

what a detailed study of one year of the Surre registers can tell us about the structure and makeup

of the Ottoman presence in the Harameyn. In essence, this chapter is a snapshot of the everyday

presence of the Ottoman state in the Harameyn. Presence meaning the institutions, people, and

activities sponsored by money from across the Ottoman Empire that made up the constructed

spaces and social networks fostered in the holy cities.

The year chosen for this snapshot is the year of 1081 Hijri or the hajj of April 1671. In

some respects, this year is random, one year of registers among many tracing Ottoman payments

throughout the seventeenth century. However, I chose this year for several reasons, the first of

which is that several pilgrimage narratives utilized in my research were written around the time

of this year providing important insights and context to the quantitative information provided by

the Surre registers. These include Evliya Çelebi (1672), Abu Salim al-‘Ayyashi (1661) Safi ibn

Vali Qazvini (1676), Yusuf Nabi (1678), Acemzade Ali Şaban (1678), Abdurrahman b. Abdullah

(1680), Joseph Pitts (1685), Ahmad Aḥuzay (1685), Abu Abdallah Mohammed al-Hajj (1688),

and ʻAbd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (1693). All of these narratives occur within ten to twenty years of

these Surre registers and provide important context for pilgrims’ interpretations of events and

Ottoman power relationships in the region around the time of these records.

Furthermore, the year 1671 is the year in which the Banu Khalid tribe rebelled in Arabia

against the Ottoman state so it was important to see if this event directly impacted the Surre

which was travelling through the region at the time.31 Lastly, I have looked through the registers

31 For more information in Morisocs in the Ottoman Empire see Tijana Krstić, “The Elusive Intermediaries: Moriscos in Ottoman and Western European Diplomatic Sources from Constantinople, 1560s-1630s,” in Journal of

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from 1671 to 1675 covering five years of records which all are almost exact copies of each other

with some years having some registers split into two and some years including registers which

seems to have been lost from other years.32 This shows that while this chapter is only looking in

detail at one year of the Surre registers it is representative of Ottoman investment in the region

for at least half of the 1670s.33 Therefore, the pilgrims whose narratives are listed above and

discussed in previous chapters likely witnessed the same level or similar levels of Ottoman

investment in the Harameyn as represented by the 1671 Surre registers. Given the broader

outlook presented in Güler’s work, these numbers found in the Surre registers of 1671 are

representative of the renewed and greater investment in the Harameyn started under Mehmed

IV’s reign a few decades earlier, providing the nuts and bolts of the new imperial investment

scheme.

The Surre register of 1671 includes twelve total separate registers which vary in size

from a few pages to up to 168 pages. Each page roughly includes 21 names with their payments

from the Surre under a subheading designating what task for which they are receiving the yearly

stipend. These tasks range from specific prayers to be said in the name of the Ottoman Sultan, to

water carriers, to judgeships, to unspecified general payments. Generally, each register will begin

with payments which directly come from the main source of each register, be that the Ottoman

treasury, the harvest from Romanian villages, endowments in Crete, or money from specific

imperial religious endowments. Then following this in most registers one can find various lists of

smaller religious endowments and the small groups of people they mean to sponsor. This chapter

is the result of translating and cataloging every entry from 11 of the 12 separate registers for

Early Modern History, v. 19,2 (2015), p. 129-151.32 Michael Pearson, Pilgrimage to Mecca: The Indian Experience 1500-1800, (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996), 109.33 See Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 82.

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1671. The register excluded is for endowments meant for the people of Jerusalem and Hebron

and the focus of the chapter is on all the other registers which are meant for Medina (seven total)

and Mecca (four total).34 The most important and largest registers are the two oldest Surre

registers primarily funded from the imperial treasury in Istanbul for Mecca and Medina.35 The

third largest register is the one for Medina from endowments in Damascus.36 The other smaller

registers are from the new endowments added during the reign of Mehmed IV and a register for

the endowments from Aleppo. Together these registers form the hundreds of pages which

catalogued the yearly Surre gift of the Ottoman Empire.

This year of the Surre is catalogued amongst the hundreds Surre registers which were

diligently recorded for every single year from first years of the seventeenth century through the

nineteenth century, almost three hundred years of faithful record keeping by the Ottoman

bureaucracy. The only year missing amongst all of the records is 1757 where only two registers

for Medina and one for Jerusalem survive. For comparison, by this point in the eighteenth

century the number of Ottoman endowments for the Harameyn had doubled from the late

seventeenth century, so that in the years 1756 and 1758 there were 24 and 26 Surre registers

recorded respectively. The reason for this is that in 1757 the Banu Sakhr tribe attacked and

plundered the Ottoman caravan from Damascus.37 This raid tells us an important detail about the

Surre registers themselves, that they traveled with the caravan as a mobile archive. Around

20,000 pilgrims died in the raid by the Banu Sakhr or subsequently died in the desert from

hunger and thirst, bereft of supplies and exacerbated by drought.38 It would seem that the 20

34 Ibid. 35 Ibid.36 Ibid.37 See Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 128-30, or for an edition with full footnotes citing the specific Ottoman documents that describe this see Ismail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Mekke-i Mükerreme Emirleri…,35-40.38 Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994), 89,

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missing registers from 1757 were plundered with the money brought in the Surre and most likely

ended up providing kindling for a Banu Sakhr campfire. The Surre registers, a leather-bound

representation of Ottoman imperial record keeping, were lost in the desert along with the

unfortunate members of the 1757 caravan. This brief episode helps us to understand the tenuous

connection between the Ottoman cities dotting the Mediterranean and the holy cities of Mecca

and Medina while also revealing the travelling nature of these documents themselves.

The pilgrimage road through the desert was dangerous, with threat of Bedouin raids and

the ever-present danger of thirst or starvation. For the Ottoman state to extend its reach across

the desert required a massive empire-wide effort to secure the caravan route with soldiers and

fortresses in order to be able to provide to the people of Mecca and Medina the massive funds

which purchased loyalty and legitimacy for the Ottoman Empire. The massive amount of money

delivered and diverse array of investments by the Ottoman Empire leaves the impression that

there was a strong imperial Ottoman state infrastructure in place in the Harameyn. However, the

raid of 1757 reminds us that this link could easily be severed and that this imperial incursion into

the Harameyn was seasonal in nature, tied to the changing seasons of the hajj. The reach of the

empire was long and influential but it was limited by geographic, environmental, and seasonal

challenges which were inherent to the hajj route and Arabia. Outside of the hajj season the

money stayed but the force of the empire departed. This seasonal imperial relationship is best

understood through the pages of the registers which seems to provide the greatest evidence of

Ottoman control in the Harameyn, the meticulous notarial pages of the imperial Surre.

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C. THE SCOPE AND MEANING OF THE SURRE OF 1671

The Surre registers of 1671 contain within them a total of 7,549 individual entries with

5,168 of those entries referencing more than one person. Moreover, the instances which do cite a

specific number of people increase the total of individuals paid by the annual Surre to 13,258

with thousands of references to countless sons, daughters, children, companions, and others.39

The number of people directly receiving yearly stipends from the endowments contained within

the Ottoman Surre of 1671 definitely exceeds 20,000 people and likely more than that number. It

is also important to note that these funds are for people living year-round in Mecca and Medina

and therefore must represent a significant part of the permanent population of each of those

cities. Suraiya Faroqhi estimates that the population of Medina in the early modern period was

“at least 40,000 people” and that Mecca had “15,000” residents.40 Of the 7,549 entries listed in

the Surre of 1671 around 71 percent are for individuals in the city of Medina and around 28

percent are for people in Mecca. There is definitely a noticeable preference by the Ottomans to

provide funds to Medina at a greater degree than Mecca but some amount of this discrepancy

was due to the fact that less people were estimated to actually live in Mecca, it is hard to invest

in people who do not exist. Moreover, we know from other sources and pilgrimage narratives

that Medina was much more of an Ottoman space. Beyond the number of entries, the total

amount of money sent to Mecca and Medina can be seen in table I separated into the different

currencies designated by different registers. Given the uncertain data on currency conversion at

the time due to inflation I have left the number signified in the currency given.

39 See Surre register- EV.HMK.SR, 169,171,172,173,174,175,176. The regional origin of the people newly endowed in these registers from Mehmed IV’s reign skew heavily towards regional backgrounds connected to Anatolia and the Balkans, a distinct shift from the more global spread of origins of those individuals endowed found in the other earlier registers. This interesting shift in the regional background of those endowed might have to do maybe with notions that people from the Balkans and Anatolia were more loyal to the empire or that those choosing the people endowed began to favor individuals that they personally knew, it is unclear.40 Banu Khalid Rebellion discussed in chapter 4.

17

Table I: Total Amount of Money Paid to the Harameyn in the Surre of 167141

Sikke (Coin/

akçe)

Hisse (Coin

purse)

Dirham Esedi Garus

Medina 260,108.5 6,025 879,904 600 3,257

Mecca 17,618.5 2,670 0 0 1,259

It is clear from the totals given here that Medina experienced far greater influence from the

Ottoman state from these endowments alone. The city of Medina received a lion’s share of the

money invested and 71 percent of the total number of instances signifying separate individuals,

groups, or families. This corresponds with observations by pilgrims cited in the previous

chapters who saw Medina as more of an Ottoman space governed by a former eunuch of the

Ottoman imperial place, the Sheikh al-Harem of Medina, who was essentially the governor of the

city.42 Lack of money sent to Mecca in comparison to Medina is as much a testament to the

power of the Sharifs of Mecca as it is to the lack of Ottoman power. Nevertheless, the truth is

that the money distributed with the Surre provided funds to a wide range of people in both

Mecca and Medina and tied those individuals to the yearly comings and goings of the Ottoman

hajj caravan, although to a lesser degree in Mecca.

One of the most unique features of the Surre registers compared with other Ottoman

archival documents for the study of the early modern period is that it best showcases who the

empire values in society. In other words, when the Ottoman Empire and its officials, such as the

41 Amnon Cohen, Palestine in the 18th Century: Patterns of Government and Administration, (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1973), 20. And see Jane Hathaway and Karl Barbir, The Arab Lands Under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800, (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2008), 89-90, and see Jane Hathaway, The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem…, 154-157.42 Compiled from EV.HMK.SR, 165,166,167,169,170,171,172,173,174,175, 176, the value of each of the currencies varies greatly and it seems that the Dirham is the weakest of the currencies by far

18

eunuchs in the palace and Medina, have a chance to pick and choose the networks they aim to

influence with imperial stipends who do they select. The most immediate comparison to the large

population numbers found in the Surre registers are the famous cadastral surveys, tapu tahrir

defteri, which detail the landed property in a standard Ottoman province and the tax revenue to

be extracted from it. This type of document only tells us what the empire saw and valued as

extractable and the landed, generally male, property owners who were to be taxed. In essence,

the cadastral survey is about extraction for the empire. Conversely, the Surre is about infusion

and investment. The cadastral surveys are tied to the existing landed hierarchies and therefore

reactive to what is taxable and extractable in a particular location. The Surre registers are not

reactive to an “on the ground” reality but rather reflective of the vision of the community the

empire wished to support and shape. A community of individuals who were paid to say prayers

for the sultans and physically act out Ottoman claims of spiritual and temporal authority over the

global Islamic community. The people included in the Surre registers are selected and chosen by

the empire, imperial officials in Istanbul, and the pious endowments that imperial patronage

produced. These registers are not cadastral surveys telling us who owns land and property and

they are not similar to census records counting the full scope of those who reside in Mecca and

Medina.

These registers represent a network of yearly imperial patronage that imbues loyalty to

the state and therefore produces Ottoman power and legitimacy. They include powerful men,

judges, and landowners but also women, students, and the impoverished. All assigned different

sums of money revealing their own weight and importance to the Ottoman Empire and its pious

holdings. While a study of the Harameyn in the Ottoman period currently archivally lacks the

court records or cadastral surveys essential and important to the study of the core provinces of

19

the empire, researchers do have access to the Surre registers, a valuation from the view of the

empire not upon what can be taxed but who matters in society.43 In many ways the Harameyn for

the early modern Ottoman Empire is like a province without the nuts and bolts of empire. It has

no governor, no tax revenue, no tax collector, no soldiers to be mustered, or goods to export. It

was difficult for the Ottoman state to assert its temporal power upon the sacred space of the

Harameyn by the standard means of empire.

Without these formalized imperial positions and functions all that is left are the veins of

empire; a network of people to maintain an assemblage of imperial authority and legitimacy. One

of the only levers of power left to the Ottoman Empire to influence these people is to provide

patronage and that patronage is the Surre. Therefore, the Surre registers reveal those people that,

in the view of the state and its endowments, make an empire. Remarkably, that empire

transposed upon a sacred space is not only comprised of elite landowning men but also of

women, widows, children, students, foreigners, and the poor. We can be certain that some of the

motive for Ottoman endowments in the Harameyn was partially due to a sincere sacred duty to

help the poor and support the holy cities. However, there is little doubt that their motive for the

massive amount of funds supporting certain individuals and groups in the Harameyn was also an

effort to exert influence and imbue loyalty in exchange for the sacred legitimacy and prestige

garnered by their protection and patronage of the holy cities.

II. DECODING THE SURRE OF 1671

43 For more information on the role of the Şeyhü’l-Harem see Jane Hathaway, The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem: From African Slave to Power-Broker, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 118-125.

20

A. ENDOWING THE HAJJ: SOURCES OF THE MONEY FOR THE SURRE

One of the major questions which surrounds the Surre is where did the Ottoman state find

all these funds to be sent across the empire to Mecca and Medina? The answer is varied and

reveals the empire-wide effort by the Ottoman state to provide the wealth necessary to support its

patronage network in the Harameyn. Using all the Surre registers earmarked for funds to be sent

to Mecca or Medina we get a clear sense of the scope of the imperial endowments supporting the

Surre. In total for the seven thousand entries in the Surre registers of 1671 there are 44 unique

linkages between the locations of an endowment for the Harameyn and for the city receiving

those funds. Together these points reveal a map of imperial patronage centered squarely upon a

narrow corridor comprising Istanbul, the Balkans, Anatolia, and Syria as seen in figure I below.

Figure I: Map of the Places Sending Funds to the Harameyn in the Surre Registers of 1671

(Counted by number of individual instances)44

44 This is also noted by Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 127.

21

When compiling the data from the Surre registers if a specific sending location was not

noted I marked the entry as being from a default location. This default reflected the origin of the

register in which the entry was located. Many of the registers are sourced from endowments and

treasury holdings based in Istanbul. For this reason, funds directly from endowments in Istanbul

may be overrepresented due to number of registers from Istanbul and the unknown locations of

pious endowments found within them. Istanbul was, at least, nominally the most significant

source of funding for over half of the total entries. When it was clear if a series of entries were

22

from a pious endowment located in a different city, such as Amasya or Karaman, this was dually

noted. These types of instances were present in the registers cited as being from Istanbul or

elsewhere, meaning that the origin of the endowments titled on the register itself does not

necessarily apply to everything bound with it. While Istanbul certainly stands out in the data it is

likely that many of the pious endowments mentioned in the Surre and listed in the Istanbul

registers had connections and ties to other Ottoman provinces in the Balkans and Anatolia.

Returning to figure I, the map showcases the outsized weight of the endowments for

Medina, noted in green, as funds for Mecca are only prominently noted in yellow in Aleppo,

Caransebeș and Lugoj, and Istanbul. For Medina, the volume of these incidents, representing

thousands of people, are not in one instance outpaced by Mecca. Medina also received money

from Damascus and its environs for a large number of individuals representing its second highest

total after Istanbul. Mecca received no funds from Damascus with the Surre in 1671, pointing

once again to the larger network of Ottoman patronage present in the city of Medina.

The Surre registers provide references to the variety of sources which produced funds for

these annual gifts to the Harameyn. A large portion of the Surre from Istanbul is paid for in

general by the imperial treasury and the Sultan’s personal allowance.45 The Surre registers

themselves do not note from where these state funds were sourced. The majority of the

remaining funds were sourced from various pious endowments. These included prominent ones

such as the pious endowments of Mehmed IV’s mother, Turan Hatice Sultan, or the pious

endowments of Gazi Huseyn Pasha the Vizier of the newly conquered island of Crete. However,

the pious endowments also contained smaller ones, such as the endowment of Küçük Sinan who

45 See EV.HMK.SR, 165 and 167.

23

was noted to reside on the Island of Lesbos.46 Smaller still, one pious endowment is of Sanver

Hatun the wife of a Hamza Efendi who was the head of scribes in Istanbul.47 Together these

types of individual endowments formed a significant part of the Surre registers.

Pious endowments from individuals were not the only source from which the Surre drew

funds. There are several entries which site funds from the Hagia Sofia mosque in Istanbul as well

as various other mosques around the empire such as the Beyazit Mosque complex in Amasya, the

Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, and the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque in Damascus.48 In addition to

this, the rents of a market, the Khan al-Saboun [Soap Market], in Damascus were specifically

designated for the Surre and distributed in Medina.49 The Surre was also funded by taxation and

harvests produced by the empire’s non-Muslim communities. The the Islamic head-tax placed on

protected non-Muslim subjects (jiziye) for the Armenians of Istanbul was included in the Surre

register and provided to the residents of Medina.50 In addition to the Armenians of Istanbul

several other non-Muslim villages had the profits from their harvests designated as sources for

the Surre, such as, the aforementioned Romanian villages of Caransebeș and Lugoj, farms on the

Island of Cyprus, and the Orthodox Christian village of Btourram in the Ottoman province of

Tripoli in modern day Lebanon.51 It is an open question as to if the Armenians of Istanbul or

these Orthodox villagers knew where the funds they were providing went and that they helped to

46 EV.HMK.SR, 165, 167, 175, 176. By the mid-18th century Barbir notes that even the taxes collected from Christian Monasteries in Jerusalem are being used for the Hajj. See Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 124.47 EV.HMK.SR, 165, fol. 61a. This endowment is labeled as being from Mehmed Çelebi Katib of the Vilayet (Province) of Yemen, it may be that while Mehmed Çelebi served in some capacity in what remained of the Ottoman province of Yemen in the seventeenth century but his endowment may have been located somewhere nearer to Istanbul given the context of the rest of the register.48 EV. HMK. SR, 171, fol. 8b.49 EV. HMK. SR, 167, fol. 45a.50 Ende, W., “Mud̲j̲āwir”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Consulted online on 10 November 2018 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_5307>, First published online: 201251 Compiled from EV.HMK.SR, 165,166,167,169,170,171,172,173,174,175, 176. Need to update names on map, Maras should be Diyarbakir, and a few others should be repositioned

24

fund individuals in Mecca and Medina. It is clear that the Ottoman state sought to procure funds

for the Surre from anywhere possible which, in turn, created various odd pairings, such as, the

aforementioned case of the Nakshibandi Sheikh from Balkh getting paid from funds procured in

the Romanian countryside. The money taken from the Armenians was used to pay a lofty sum of

over 200 sikke coins to the Müjdeci Başı of Medina whose official role was to ride ahead of the

caravan and announce its return from the hajj.52 Even the funds from the Christian village of

Btourram were used to pay a Hanafi Imam in Medina.53 Despite the variety of funding sources

utilized for the Surre it is clear through the map produced above that most of the funds were

procured from Istanbul and the Province of Syria which each also happen to represent the two

prominent stops along the hajj route from the imperial capital overland to the Harameyn. The

only major exception to this is funds noted as coming from an endowment from the province of

Yemen.54

It appears that the Ottoman Surre more or less was representative of the provinces most

congruent to the line of communication between Istanbul and the Harameyn. This may have been

due to the growing enmeshment of the Ottoman hajj caravan with the Shami hajj caravan which

left from Damascus. It also may have been logistically difficult for funds to be brought from

holdings in Iraq, Egypt or North Africa due to their distance from Istanbul and the other caravans

which left from those regions as well.55 The funds from Egypt were carried with the Egyptian

caravan since Mamluk times and served as a competing network of influence upon the Harameyn

52 Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 126.53 It is always hard to disentangle what may be due to sectarian bias or imperial competition but I lean towards the conclusion that this may have been to imperial competition and sectarian difference followed that distinction, also see Rula Abisaab, Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004).54 For more information in Morisocs in the Ottoman Empire see Tijana Krstić, “The Elusive Intermediaries: Moriscos in Ottoman and Western European Diplomatic Sources from Constantinople, 1560s-1630s,” in Journal of Early Modern History, v. 19,2 (2015), p. 129-151.55 Michael Pearson, Pilgrimage to Mecca: The Indian Experience 1500-1800, (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996), 109.

25

representing the interests of the powerful ruling households of that province.56 It is clear that the

Surre represented the interests of the Ottoman Empire anchored by funds procured

predominantly in Istanbul and the cities of Aleppo and Damascus. Moreover, that imperial reach

focused heavily on the city of Medina which in turn supported a network of loyalty both in

formal and informal positions of power and influence.

B. GLOBAL NETWORKS AND IMPERIAL POWER: REGIONAL DIVERSITY

IN THE SURRE OF 1671

In 1671 a prayer reader from the Mughal city of Lahore was paid six sikke coins from the

endowment of the Ottoman sultan Murad IV (r. 1623-40) to read prayers at the afternoon daily

prayer (Asr) in Mecca.57 Another man, a certain eunuch by the name Bahan al-Gawi Agha from

Gao on the Niger river, received a stipend from an endowment based in Damascus to support his

livelihood in the city of Medina.58 A third man, Mevlana Ahmed bin Abduallah Belgradi, a sufi

from Belgrade was paid five sikke coins from the endowment of the Mahmud Pasha Mosque in

Istanbul to recite prayers in the Prohpet’s tomb in Medina.59 A woman, by the name of

Rummanah from East Africa, was a manumitted slave of a certain Raina Hatun and was given a

stipend along with her children of ten sikke coins from the endowment of the Eunuch Yusuf Aga

in Istanbul.60 What tied these diverse set of individuals together was the annual stipend they

received at the arrival of the Ottoman sponsored caravan in the holy cities. Together they formed

the nodes of influence in a seasonal network of imperial patronage which projected notions of

56 See Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 82.57 Ibid. 58 Ibid.59 Ibid.60 See Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 128-30, or for an edition with full footnotes citing the specific Ottoman documents that describe this see Ismail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Mekke-i Mükerreme Emirleri…,35-40.

26

Ottoman Islamic legitimacy and authority to peoples from across the early modern Islamic

world.

The cities of Mecca and Medina were some of the most regionally and ethnically diverse

places in the early modern world due to the global connectivity provided by the hajj season. The

Harameyn hosted Muslim pilgrims from all across the Islamic world and this diversity is dually

reflected in the Surre registers of 1671. Besides the pilgrims arriving yearly from around the

Islamic world, the Harameyn also hosted permanent foreign residents, called a mücavir, who

lived in the Holy Cities for an extended period of time.61 These foreign residents of Mecca and

Medina were in residence in order “to lead a life of ascetism and religious contemplation” and

were generally religious scholars.62 These foreign residents together with the hajj pilgrims made

it so that Mecca and Medina had an incredibly vibrant population with Muslims in residence

from such places as Iran, India, the Balkans, Morocco, and West Africa. The Harameyn provided

an important inter-imperial zone in which the Ottoman Empire could assert and display its claims

to sacred and temporal authority on a global scale. The regional diversity presented in the Surre

not only provides evidence of Ottoman sponsorship of a variety of Ottoman subjects in the

Harameyn but is also evidence of imperial sponsorship of those individuals connected beyond its

imperial boarders.

The Harameyn provided the Ottoman Empire with a global network that it could invest in

and influence. Ottoman networks of influence in Medina, represented through imperial

sponsorship by way of the Surre, reveal the plethora of Ottoman subjects originally from every

61 Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994), 89,62 See Surre register- EV.HMK.SR, 169,171,172,173,174,175,176. The regional origin of the people newly endowed in these registers from Mehmed IV’s reign skew heavily towards regional backgrounds connected to Anatolia and the Balkans, a distinct shift from the more global spread of origins of those individuals endowed found in the other earlier registers. This interesting shift in the regional background of those endowed might have to do maybe with notions that people from the Balkans and Anatolia were more loyal to the empire or that those choosing the people endowed began to favor individuals that they personally knew, it is unclear.

27

corner of the empire. Additionally, Ottoman sponsorship of Indians, Iranians, Central Asians,

and Africans in the Harameyn reveals the reach and trans-imperial networks these imperial

stipends sought to influence. These peoples represented, through the act of receiving yearly

funds from the Ottoman caravan, direct points of connection between the Ottoman Empire and

its claims as leaders of the Islamic world. It is unclear to what effect Ottoman sponsorship of

these non-Ottoman subjects had upon their impression of the Ottoman Empire and its role in the

global Islamic community.

Of the over seven thousand individual entries included with the Surre registers of 1671

just over 2,600 of them included references to the regional origin of the individual or their

family. It is again important to stress that a majority of the 2,600 individual instances referenced

in the Surre registers refer to multiple people, generally families, and therefore the number of

individual people is in reality much higher than 2,600. While amassing this data I assumed that

even in the cases in which an individual’s toponym refers to their parent that that individual still

maintained some connection to the referenced toponym. Therefore, the 2,600 individuals

referenced in the Surre registers are representative either of a person’s place of origin or their

family connections to that place. Thus, the map produced from this data showcases the regional

diversity of both individuals who lived in the Harameyn and the geographic scope touched by

this network of Ottoman sponsorship. Rather than only sponsoring local Arab tribes, a regional

network relied upon by the Sharifs of Mecca for power as demonstrated by Sharif Saad b. Zeyd,

the sponsorship network employed by the Ottoman Empire sought to support Ottoman authority

and legitimacy via non-local individuals. Two map representations of the “regional origin” of

individual instances in the Surre registers of 1671 are presented in figures II and III. Figure II

28

showcases the full world view of the number of instances for each toponym and figure III

includes a closer viewpoint for the same data focusing on the Mediterranean.

29

Figure II: Regional Origin of People in Mecca and Medina from the Surre of 1671 (Full View)63

Figure III: Regional Origin of People in Mecca and Medina from the Surre of 1671 (Zoom)64

The maps reveal clusters, ones which are expected and others which are surprising. The

expected clusters are found around Istanbul and Damascus, the two major sources for the Surre

and it is therefore not surprising that many of the individuals supported by the Surre would have

connections to those two cities. Other cities along the caravan route from Istanbul to the

Harameyn are also well represented, with cities such as Aleppo, Kayseri, Karaman, Konya, and

many smaller instances counted along the Levantine coastal plain. In similar numbers the map

shows significant numbers of people with connections to other areas in what would be

63 Banu Khalid Rebellion discussed in chapter 4.64 Amnon Cohen, Palestine in the 18th Century: Patterns of Government and Administration, (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1973), 20. And see Jane Hathaway and Karl Barbir, The Arab Lands Under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800, (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2008), 89-90, and see Jane Hathaway, The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem…, 154-157.

30

considered the “core provinces” of the Ottoman Empire, Anatolia and Rumelia. A noticeable

number of individuals are noted as having connections to Rumelia (Balkans), with a significant

number of instances from Bosnia, Plovdiv, Scutari, and Skopje. These instances point to the

Balkan Muslim population of the seventeenth century and its ties to the Ottoman administration

around the empire.

Some of the largest amounts of toponym instances are found in Eastern Anatolia,

particularly the cities of Diyarbakir and Erzurum. It is unclear why these cities had such

prominent ties to the foreign residents of Mecca and Medina but we know that men from Eastern

Anatolia had an increasing role in the elite circles of the Ottoman state during the seventeenth

century.65 The process by which the state chose those individuals who would receive the stipend

from the Surre is less than clear. The data indicates that there was some increasing regional bias

in who stipend payments were made to for people from the Balkans and Anatolia under the new

endowments created during the reign of Mehmed IV. This suggests that the Eastern Anatolian

and religious influence in his court, represented by the Kadızadelis, may have had some

influence who was selected for imperial stipends in the holy cities.

There are several toponyms which rarely appear, if at all. Important imperial centers like

Salonika, Sofia, the burgeoning port cities of Izmir and Trabzon, and the imperial holdings in

Greece and Hungary are all conspicuously absent. This map presents a different vision of the

provinces of Anatolia and Rumelia. Rather than highlighting the cities which hold significant

population, economic significance, or strategic importance, this vision of these regions

showcases a sampling of those cities which have connections to the network of sponsorship in

the Harameyn. Favoring places such as Kayseri or Karaman over the significant trading centers

65 Compiled from EV.HMK.SR, 165,166,167,169,170,171,172,173,174,175, 176, the value of each of the currencies varies greatly and it seems that the Dirham is the weakest of the currencies by far

31

of the empire. This network is dependent upon cities having a relatively active Islamic

community and sufficient ties to those who selected the stipend recipients in the Harameyn. The

cities shown in the Balkans and Anatolia represent those places with larger Muslim populations

at the time and therefore there is underrepresentation from cities in Western Anatolia, Trabzon,

and Greece reflecting the urban strength of the non-Muslim population which resided there.

Some cities might represent one family and the various children of some individual who were all

endowed and noted separately in the Surre. While this was certainly not the case for all the

instances, for some, such as the island of Kos or several of the entries for Kayseri, this was a

noticeable factor during data collection.

Looking outside of Rumelia and Anatolia we can observe a large cluster of toponym

instances for cities in the Nile delta of Egypt. The prominent cities included with these are

Alexandria, Cairo, Helwan, Minuf, and Damietta. The Ottoman sponsorship of those residents of

the Harameyn from Egypt reveals two important points. First, many Egyptians from the Nile

delta lived in the Harameyn should not be surprising given the region’s long historical

agricultural connection to Mecca and Medina. Egypt sent significant foodstuffs annually to

Mecca and Medina to provide the necessary food for the seasonal influx of pilgrims to the

region.66 This coupled with the delta’s large population and the yearly caravan from Cairo to the

Harameyn certainly made it easier for a large number of Egyptians to reach and reside in the

holy cities. Second, the Surre funded many people from Egypt although the money and funds

traveled with the Egyptian caravan separately from the Surre by the seventeenth century. This

was related to the fact that for much of the sixteenth century and the early seventeenth century

the Surre would travel to Cairo first by ship and then travel with the Egyptian caravan to Mecca

66 For more information on the role of the Şeyhü’l-Harem see Jane Hathaway, The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem: From African Slave to Power-Broker, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 118-125.

32

and Medina.67 The Ottoman sponsorship of subjects from the Nile Delta in the Harameyn can be

connected to three important observations. These payments represent a leftover from the Surre’s

previous sixteenth-century route to Mecca through Egypt, a reflection of the ease of access to eh

holy cities for those who resides in Egypt, and an Ottoman attempt to infiltrate and influence

Egyptian networks of sponsorship which were generally dominated by prominent Egyptian

families.68

The most surprising aspect of the regional background of those people sponsored by the

Ottoman Surre are the large number of individuals from outside the boundaries of the Ottoman

Empire. The clusters of instances surrounding the core provinces and population centers of the

Ottoman Empire certainly reflect an imperial bias and skew in terms of sponsorship in the

Harameyn. However, the number of people involved from outside imperial boarders provide the

first real statistical reflection of the regional diversity found in Mecca and Medina during the

early modern period. The network of Ottoman sponsorship crossed imperial boundaries

demonstrating how the Harameyn served as a stage from which the Ottoman Empire could

influence and project its claims of Islamic global hegemony in an inter-imperial space. There are

several significant clusters which sit outside Ottoman borders; Central Asia, Safavid Iran,

Mughal Northern India, Yemen, and North Africa. The Central Asian cluster focuses

significantly upon the city of Bukhara, with notable numbers from Samarkand, Khujand, Balkh,

and Afghanistan. There have been scholarly claims that the presence of the Shia Safavid Empire

prevented the movement of people from Central Asia to Mecca seeking to perform the hajj.69

This data reveals that there was a large presence of Central Asian Muslims in Mecca and

67 This is also noted by Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 127.68 See EV.HMK.SR, 165 and 167.69 EV.HMK.SR, 165, 167, 175, 176. By the mid-18th century Barbir notes that even the taxes collected from Christian Monasteries in Jerusalem are being used for the Hajj. See Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 124.

33

Medina, enough that the Ottoman state provided yearly funds to many of them. Moreover, a

significant number of cities cited were located in Safavid Iran, a chief rival to the Ottoman

Empire. While it is not surprising to find Iranians in the Harameyn in the late seventeenth

century, especially after the 1639 Peace of Zuhab which ended the Ottoman-Safavid wars, it is

significant that so many of them are being funded by the yearly stipend from the Surre. Major

Safavid cities such as Tabriz or Shiraz are missing from any of the toponyms collected by the

Surre and many of the toponyms mentioned are smaller towns and villages. It is unclear if this

had to do with the Sunni and Shiite composition of Safavid cities and the Safavid countryside or

if it had to do with an avoidance of individuals who had ties to the Safavid state which would

have likely been people living in large urban centers.70

Comparatively, the number of people from Mughal India are generally clustered around

its major cities or simply noted as “Indian” giving no reference to a specific location. The major

cities and regions included are Lahore, Multan, Delhi, and Kashmir. Notably, these center on the

northern reaches of the Mughal Empire and only once are there references to Islamic centers in

the Deccan and there are no references to the cities in Gujarat, specifically Surat. It is entirely

possible that the many people labeled as “Indian” were from these regions as well but

nevertheless were not mentioned by name. Taken together with the previous two examples it is

evident that the Ottoman state was sponsoring a significant number of people from the three

major Muslim states to its east, the Safavid Empire, the Khanate of Bukhara, and the Mughal

Empire. The sponsorship of Muslims from rival Islamic states is also found through the

endowments of North Africans, or Maghrebis.71 A Maghrebi could refer to someone from within

70 EV.HMK.SR, 165, fol. 61a. This endowment is labeled as being from Mehmed Çelebi Katib of the Vilayet (Province) of Yemen, it may be that while Mehmed Çelebi served in some capacity in what remained of the Ottoman province of Yemen in the seventeenth century but his endowment may have been located somewhere nearer to Istanbul given the context of the rest of the register.71 EV. HMK. SR, 171, fol. 8b.

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the Ottoman domains or from the Moroccan Sultanate. This makes it difficult to pinpoint

whether the Maghrebis frequently mentioned in the Surre are from provinces external to the

Ottoman Empire or from nominally Ottoman North Africa. Lastly, Yemenis also form a

significant portion of those receiving stipends from the Surre and by the late seventeenth century

Ottoman authority Yemen had dissipated. It is possible that the names and families included in

the register as Yemenis are holdovers from an era in the early seventeenth century when the

Ottoman Empire still maintained nominal control in Yemen.

Outside of these clusters of sponsorship there are several outliers which deserve mention

in order to present the global scope of the great Ottoman sponsorship effort and the microcosm

of the Islamic world which would be found in the Harameyn. Most notably are the number of

sub-Saharan Africans mentioned in the Surre register. Many of these were the African eunuchs

who held important positions both in the Prophet’s tomb in Medina and the entourage of the

Sharif of Mecca. They are referenced under the toponyms of Habeş, referring generally to East

Africa, and Takrur, which generally refers to West Africa. Moreover, a few specific cities are

mentioned, such as, Gao, a prominent center near Timbuktu on the Niger river, and Negash in

Ethiopia, considered to have one of Africa’s oldest mosques.72 Further to the north on the map

there are several references to people from al-Andalus and Granada in Southern Spain. By this

moment in the seventeenth century the Moriscos had been expelled from Spain but clearly these

are individuals were from those expelled families and had found themselves in Ottoman

sponsorship records in the Harameyn.73 Elsewhere in Europe there are several references to

people noted as “Abd-i Rus” which directly translates to “slave of Russia.” This refers to the

72 EV. HMK. SR, 167, fol. 45a.73 Ende, W., “Mud̲j̲āwir”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Consulted online on 10 November 2018 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_5307>, First published online: 2012

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many people who were taken as captives and brought into the Black Sea slave trade from the

Northern Caucuses and the Ukrainian Steppe. These slaves were then converted to Islam and it

appears that several of them also found their way into the Ottoman patronage network of the

Harameyn. Nearby, many individuals are noted as being from Dagestan which is in the Caucuses

along the Caspian Sea and served as a prominent borderland between the burgeoning Russian

Empire and the Safavid Empire during the later years of the seventeenth century.

Forming the furthest northerly reaches of the noted patronage network are two references

to members of the Bashkir Turkic tribal group of the Russian steppe. Further to the east there are

a few references to the Karakash river valley near Hotan in modern day Eastern China along with

one reference to a specifically Chinese person labeled as “Sini.”74 Rounding out the geographic

distribution of those being paid by the Ottoman state in Mecca and Medina are several references

to people from Bengal and one reference to an individual form the Deccan in Eastern and South-

Central India respectively.

While the total numbers of these geographic outliers are small, they do demonstrate the

vast scope of the Ottoman patronage network, affecting the lives of individuals from a large

swath of the Islamic world. Moreover, these references showcase the sacred pull the cities of

Mecca and Medina and the hajj pilgrimage had upon individuals from across the early modern

Islamic world creating an annual global metropolis. Lacking in this global map are references to

Southeast Asia and Southern India are the most prominent Islamic communities lacking any

explicit representation in the Ottoman Surre. This was due to a lack of pilgrims from those

regions during this period resulting from the long journey or a lack of sufficient connections to

the Ottoman state. This omission is odd given that we know the Ottomans and the Sharifs of

74 Compiled from EV.HMK.SR, 165,166,167,169,170,171,172,173,174,175, 176. Need to update names on map, Maras should be Diyarbakir, and a few others should be repositioned

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Mecca had faint diplomatic relations with Southeast Asia and Southern India during the early

modern period, sending ambassadors back and forth.75 Nevertheless, the imperial endowment of

non-Ottoman subjects remains an important testament to the global possibilities and connectivity

of the Harameyn.

Combined, these non-Ottoman subjects formed an important portion of Ottoman

sponsorship lists contained in the Surre of 1671. They represent both the diversity of the

Harameyn and the inter-imperial reach the sacred spaces of Mecca and Medina provided to the

Ottoman Empire and its patronage network. Ottoman funds spent in the Harameyn helped to

build a network of loyalty of non-local subjects to counter the local power structures which

supported the Sharifs of Mecca. Moreover, these networks allowed Ottoman power and their

own inter-imperial claims as the leaders of the Islamic world to reach a global Muslim audience.

Whether this message was internalized and worth the investment is a different is a question best

understood by the various encounters which empire experienced by Muslim pilgrims expressed

in the pilgrimage narratives discussed previously. Through the annual Surre the Ottoman Empire

was able to influence a broad global network which was brought together by the sacred

geography of the Harameyn. This allowed the state to propagate its claims as the leader of the

Islamic world to a degree which was difficult to challenge by other early modern Islamic states.

III. CONCLUSION: THE SEASONAL EMPIRE

In the late sixteenth century, the aunt of the Mughal Emperor Akbar and prominent

Mughal princess, Gulbadan Begum, traveled overland on pilgrimage to Mecca.76 Gulbadan 75 Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 126.76 It is always hard to disentangle what may be due to sectarian bias or imperial competition but I lean towards the conclusion that this may have been to imperial competition and sectarian difference followed that distinction, also see Rula Abisaab, Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004).

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reportedly left Akbar’s capital of Fetehpur Sikri for hajj with six thousand rupees for donations

to be made in the holy cities upon her arrival.77 While it is not exactly known what was done

with these rupees by the Mughal princess in the Harameyn, we can find an entry in the Ottoman

Surre, a century after Gulbadan’s visit to Mecca, for funding a pilgrim inn named for Gulbadan

Begum.78 It appears that some of money Gulbadan Begum brought with her were used to sponsor

an inn for pilgrims and a century later this inn was partially sponsored by the Ottoman Empire.

The reach of Ottoman patronage through the Surre allowed it to influence and sponsor

Muslims from across the Islamic world, even entangling their sponsorship with endowments

from rival empires. The reach of these endowments was unbound to the imperial borders by

which we divide historical inquiry. Gulbadan Begum’s inn for pilgrims represents the global and

inter-imperial space that could be found in the cities of Mecca and Medina, not only for the

Ottoman Empire but for other Muslim dynasties around the globe. These endowments and yearly

stipends, provided by the Surre, no matter how small in some instances, were the tangible ties of

empire which connected and crafted imperial networks in the early modern world. However,

these connections were bound to the hajj season and the imperial hajj caravan. Without this

yearly encounter the Ottoman state and the benefactors of its pious beneficence would have little

influence in the Harameyn given the sacred and regional authority confronting them in the form

of the local Sharifs of Mecca.

Moreover, these funds allowed the Ottoman Empire to enact its broad imperial claims

upon the microcosm of the Islamic world found the Harameyn. Those claims were based upon

the notion that the Ottoman sultans were the caliphs of a global Islamic community and, more 77 For more information in Morisocs in the Ottoman Empire see Tijana Krstić, “The Elusive Intermediaries: Moriscos in Ottoman and Western European Diplomatic Sources from Constantinople, 1560s-1630s,” in Journal of Early Modern History, v. 19,2 (2015), p. 129-151.78 Michael Pearson, Pilgrimage to Mecca: The Indian Experience 1500-1800, (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996), 109.

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importantly, that they were the custodians of the holy cities, or hadim al-Harameyn,.79 The Surre

was one of the most important linkages between the Ottoman Empire and its claims of authority

both within the Harameyn and outside of it.

The seasonality of the hajj and the Surre reveals an important aspect of the different ways

in which early modern empires exerted their power and influence across great distances.

Ottoman power in the Harameyn ebbed and flowed with the presence of the hajj caravan and the

money it distributed. This relationship was not necessarily new to the Ottoman period. John

Meloy best describes this same sort of relationship on his work on Mecca and Cairo during the

Mamluk period.80 He argues that Mamluks used religion and their claims as the hadim al-

Harameyn to “further their political aims.”81 However, “the seasonal obeisance paid by the

Meccan sharifs to the Mamluk sultans was also a choice of practical prudence, used as an

instrument to strengthen their [the sharifs of Mecca] political position.”82 Meloy suggests that the

Mamluk relationship with the sharifs of Mecca was a constant struggle between factions and that

the political relationship between the two “underwent continual adjustment.”83 In the late

Medieval period the Mamluks were only able to assert their interests in the Harameyn during the

hajj season and during the other parts of the year the sharifs of Mecca operated autonomously.84

Meloy coins this seasonal relationship as “Mamluk seasonal domination in Mecca” and it closely

corresponds to the push and pull of Ottoman-Sharifian relations during the early modern

period.85 The Surre presents the tangible representation of the seasonality of the Ottoman 79 See Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 82.80 Ibid. 81 Ibid.82 Ibid.83 See Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus…, 128-30, or for an edition with full footnotes citing the specific Ottoman documents that describe this see Ismail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Mekke-i Mükerreme Emirleri…,35-40.84 Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994), 89,85 See Surre register- EV.HMK.SR, 169,171,172,173,174,175,176. The regional origin of the people newly endowed in these registers from Mehmed IV’s reign skew heavily towards regional backgrounds connected to Anatolia and the Balkans, a distinct shift from the more global spread of origins of those individuals endowed found in the other

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imperial power in the Harameyn. It is important that we think about the ways in which imperial

power and influence were not static nor a zero-sum game. A map presents a view of empire in

stasis, without the changing local dynamics and elastic power relations which shaped imperial

governance in the early modern world. It is clear that the seasonal relationship with the sacred

spaces of Mecca and Medina is a unique case for the study of imperial governance and power in

the early modern world. However, it is not difficult to imagine similar imperial relationships

bound by seasonality for other regions, be them tied to religious, pastoral, agricultural, or

commercial cycles.

Lastly, the Surre of 1671 reveals the ways in which the Ottoman state sought to reimpose

and strengthen the economic, political, and pious network funded by the Surre. To do so the

Ottoman Empire increased the amount of money sent and the number of people who were to be

sponsored during the second half of the seventeenth century. This imperial attempt to increase its

influence in the Harameyn by increasing endowments and payments mirrors trends in the

Mamluk period as well.86 By increasing payments and endowments the Ottoman Empire was

able to influence a network of individuals to counter the powerful tribal alliances which

buttressed Sharifian authority. These funds through the Surre helped to support the informal

Ottoman administration of Medina, administered by the eunuchs of the Prophet’s tomb, which

became much more of an “Ottoman” space when compared to Mecca. Together these funds

supported both Ottoman power in the Harameyn while also projecting its influence to the larger

Islamic world. Pilgrims, scholars, wives, and daughters, from as far away as Mughal India,

Central Asia, or West Africa were provided with yearly stipends in exchange, in many cases, for

earlier registers. This interesting shift in the regional background of those endowed might have to do maybe with notions that people from the Balkans and Anatolia were more loyal to the empire or that those choosing the people endowed began to favor individuals that they personally knew, it is unclear.86 Banu Khalid Rebellion discussed in chapter 4.

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prayers for the Ottoman sultan. The robust Ottoman endowment efforts touched the lives of

people from all corners of the Islamic world. However, this influence was fleeting and

challenged by other actors, the Sherifs Mecca and other Muslim empires. For ties that bound the

region the empire could easily be challenged and broken.