Product Review

A detailed history of a small neighborhood community of Ottoman Istanbul.

Combining the vivid and colorful detail of a micro-history with a wider historical perspective, this groundbreaking study looks at the urban and social history of a small neighborhood community (a mahalle) of Ottoman Istanbul, the Kasap Iùlyas. Drawing on exceptionally rich historical documentation starting in the early sixteenth century, Cem Behar focuses on how the Kasap Iùlyas mahalle came to mirror some of the overarching issues of the capital city of the Ottoman Empire. Also considered are other issues central to the historiography of cities, such as rural migration and urban integration of migrants, including avenues for professional integration and the solidarity networks migrants formed, and the role of historical guilds and non-guild labor, the ancestor of the "informal" or "marginal" sector found today in less developed countries.

“Behar’s book is … a source of inspiration for scholars to debate some of the important points he has raised on the changing social fabric of a neighborhood in Istanbul.” — Middle East Studies Association Bulletin

"Behar gives us a real sense of what it was like to live in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century Istanbul mahalle; until now, only the authors of novels or short stories have been able to convey such a vivid impression. We normally only know how Ottoman minor officials were supposed to function, and not how they actually operated; Behar's work allows us to bridge that gap." — Suraiya Faroqhi, author of Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire

"This book offers an exceptional addition to the growing literature on the urban history of the Middle East." — Sevket Pamuk, author of A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire