Kitab-i Bahriye II . By Pîrî Reis. pp. 425, 430 pp. of reproductions, 7 maps. Ankara, Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Turkish Republic. Prepared for publication by the Historical Research Unit, Istanbul Research Centre, 1988.

Abstract

of Ottoman rule, the industry recovered and abandoned facilities were repaired. Soap-making became an ever-more-profitable venture during the sixteenth century, as evidenced by the growing number of factories, the continued improvement of existing facilities, advance purchases of olive oil directly from the villages and the continual rise in income registered from the olive oil scales in the Jerusalem market. In addition to olive oil, soap-making required alkali, supplied in general by Bedouin tribes, thus making them an integral link in this part of the economy. The soap made in Jerusalem was marketed throughout Palestine, and Jerusalem merchants exported growing amounts of their product, primarily to Egypt. Jerusalem was not a major economic centre of the Ottoman Empire, not in this or any period. Damascus, Aleppo and Cairo were the focus of commercial and trade activity in the Arab provinces. Jerusalem was the largest and most active manufacturing and market town in its region, and was linked to the larger network through its export of locally-produced soap and the import of supplementary foodstuffs such as meat and grain, other edibles and luxury items. The religious importance of the city made it the focus of attention from all over Palestine and Syria. A long list of people were involved in the production and supply connected to each of the commodities which Cohen discusses. He not only dissects each industry into its component occupations, but analyses the social hierarchy which was defined through the professions, with the butchers most consistently in the strongest position. These latter could be found serving in the office of muhtasib, general supervisor of the markets. The muhtasib was usually a local merchant or wealthy professional, at times a butcher but not a soap manufacturer or a miller, certainly never a baker. Among the owners of soap factories, however, were some Jerusalem notables, including members of the 'ulama. In addition to the structural analysis of the city's food supply, Cohen also provides a host of statistics which he extracted from the sijill: prices of meat, bread and soap; numbers of animals; quantities of soap and bread; measures of olive oil. For each item, Cohen gives a breakdown of the different qualities available, their relative prices, as well as seasonal changes in supply and demand. Several lists of raw figures are provided in the appendices, but within the text Cohen sets the numbers in relation to one another, giving us relative prices and price fluctuations for different kinds of meat and bread, wages vs. prices of foodstuffs, and other combinations which allow us to make sense of the numbers. If we search for weaknesses in this work, they are a result of what is not in the book. It would be interesting to know more about how supplies were provided during hard times and what happened to surplus crops, or the course of the industries described in later centuries, or more on other food commodities and small manufacturing which certainly were a part of the local industry. Cohen shows how the agricultural population, the Bedouin and the townspeople were tied economically, but does not analyse the depth of this relationship and its political or social implications. That he does not address these additional subjects is mostly due to the nature of research in the sijill. The author makes clear that the quantitative, linguistic and orthographic challenges of sijill research of necessity limit the pace and scope of any project. We are fortunate that Cohen opted to restrict his inquiry and therefore speed its publication. The final product is a slim and dense work of local economic history, which the author ties securely into the wider regional and imperial developments of the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire.